



















it 


{ 

| 



t 


/ 


i 






A WOMAN’S MAN 


MARJORIE PATTERSON 


“Keep thy heart with all diligence, for 
out of it are the issues of life.” 


Proverbs , 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


By 

MARJORIE PATTERSON 

AUTHOR OF FORTUNATA, THE DUST OF THE 
ROAD,” ETC. 


NEW 'HJP YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






Copyright , 1919, 

By George H. Doran Company 


OCT 21 ,319 


V' 


ftfcf 


Printed in the United States of America 


o&MfSl • 

** 1 . 


'IL 


r 


✓ 



A WOMAN’S MAN 



» 







A WOMAN’S MAN 


CHAPTER I 

<f Weigh me the weight of the fire, or measure me the blast of the 
wind, or call me again the day that is past.” 

Esdras II. 

The first thing I remember in the penumbra of childhood 
is waking in the morning and listening to the footsteps that 
passed through our street. A secret and quite reasonless joy 
would possess me as I heard the pit-pat of the world outside 
my window. 

“Qu’est qui passe si tot matin 
“Gai, gai, sur le quai 
“Compagnon de la Marjolaine?” 

says the old nursery rhyme. Yes, who was it who was passing 
to the echo of the street? Someone I might know perhaps 
when I grew to be a man when I went out and took my place 
in life — in life that was to make me bappy, rich, famous and 
very dear to my mother — life that I feared and fearfully 
loved, whose rumours filled me with a delicious trepidation 
and made me thankful for the long cloistered years of child- 
hood. 

I do not know if many children are bom with the preoc- 
cupation of greatness, the sense that they must set a seal on 
their time, but as for me with the first gropings of my mind 
came the obsession of responsibility, the feeling that I owed 
the world some debt, that above all I owed it to my mother to 
make a name for us both. 


7 


8 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


Mother — there is the word that tuned all my young boy- 
hood, there was the influence that moulded me. 

This woman, ambitious and austere, who saw in me not 
only her son but the last of her house, she was the maker of 
me. Had my mother been of this generation, she would have 
acquired fame of some kind, for there was in her the rigorous 
stuff of which celebrity is made, but she belonged to the age 
that still spoke of the “weaker sex” ; she was old-fashioned 
enough to feel she had conquered her world if she had in- 
spired her men to conquer it for her. 

I know now it was she who built up my father. She made 
of him, who had been a provincial doctor, one of the biggest 
surgeons of his day. She drew her breath for him and when 
he died there was in her tears, I believe, as much gall as sor- 
row. It was not only her husband she had lost but her life’s 
work. When he died she left Paris where he had settled after 
his rise into fame ; she came back to Tours to the home of her 
girlhood, to the house she had left to be married. She paced 
from kitchen to pantry, from cupboard to cupboard, to the 
jingling of the keys she wore at her chatelaine, and her genius 
of organisation weighed on her — a wasting talent. 

I was so little then that it hardly seemed to her that I 
could ever be of use as a pawn. I believe it was the day she 
cut my hair short that she began to love me really. I was 
the man-child to her then and just as Hannah dedicated Sam- 
uel in the Temple so I think my mother vowed in her heart 
to form me to redeem all the efforts, all the striving that my 
father’s death had wasted. 

Now when a woman determines to exert her influence 
over child, husband, father, she sets to work as a mesmerist 
might, she filters herself somehow into the innermost nature 
of the being she would subjugate. It was not so much filial 
love I felt for this woman as veneration, as a cult — she had 
taken a profound root in me. The thought “is this right or 
is this wrong” never occurred to me ; it was always “will this 
please my mother,” or “will this displease my mother.” I 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


felt she had vowed me to some vocation and that when I grew 
up, all would he made plain. 

My mother never said to me in so many words, “I am an 
ambitious and disappointed woman, I slaved for your father ; 
proud as I am, fiercely proud, I went in spirit down on my 
knees, I fawned before people who were not worthy to brush 
his coat. I suffered and I lost ultimately. His name is noth- 
ing to what it might have been. My son, I still have you, 
make it worth while my having lived, make me feel I have 
made a man.” 

If my mother had spoken so to me, I was too young, I 
would not have understood her, but woman has a language 
infinitely more soul-reaching. It was in my mother’s eyes I 
read the presage of my future, it was in tlie caress of her 
cool soft hand that I felt — how shall I say — the call of life. 

She came into my room in the morning, — tall, tall — as 
only the child sees the grown being. She advanced noiseless 
as a shadow, her black fichu crossed on her breast. She bent 
over me and her earrings drooped forward, she kissed me on 
the forehead — no, it was not with tenderness that my heart 
bounded, it was with awe rather, with a sense — I could not 
have defined it then, I know now what it was, — the sense of 
the sacred debt we owe to the woman who has made us out of 
her flesh, who has carried us in the world for nine months 
deep down under her heart. “Good morning, my son,” my 
mother would say, and I felt that life had re-begun after the 
reposeful hours of the night. 

I would get out of bed and together we would say our 
prayers. My mother was religious, but without the beauty, 
the aestheticism of religion. She regarded the world as a 
moral gymnasium ground, or rather as a laboratory where the 
soul suffered under the lens. From what she said, I gathered 
that God tried experiments with his creatures and exerted 
his ingenuity in tempting and trying them, and that to keep 
good was in a way getting a little bit the better of God. 

Before she left the room, my mother would never fail to 


10 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


draw me against her. After all these years I can recall the 
acrid perfume of verbena that emanated from the fichu 
against my cheek. “Bemember, Armand,” my mother would 
say, “that every day is an opportunity, an opportunity to he 
better, to be stronger than yesterday.” She would underscore 
the word “strong” and the weight of life would seem to settle 
on my breast. 

Yes, she was dearest to me on earth, but it was a relief to 
me when the door closed behind her. A lightness of heart 
would possess me and I would dress whistling under my 
breath for fear she should hear me. All the while an in- 
vigorating aroma of coffee breathed through the house, and 
in the stillness of the provincial manor I could hear our old 
servant creeping about cautiously. 

When I was dressed, I would throw wide the shutters. 
We rose at six in my mother’s house but Tours is a matutinal 
town and by seven there would be plenty of folk about and 
mostly a blue sky. Opposite was a little tavern, La Croix 
d’Or , lately sprung up and a great eye-sore to my mother, in- 
deed it looked grossly out of place in this old-world street 
edged between two grandiose facades, two noble houses where 
the aristocracy of Tours was dozing behind the shutters. The 
carters would stand on the pavement, their Percheron horses 
stolidly waiting. The men would drink and laugh and a 
thrill would go through me as I thought how they had driven 
at night through the still country, how they had come from 
away off through the hush of dawn. . . . 

Or else it would be winter, with snow perhaps padding 
the ground, then shovels would be scraping in a grating sooth- 
ing rhythm, or else it might be spring with all Tours smelling 
like a basket of fresh flowers. The aroma, the wonder of the 
world when one is young! What is it that youth senses in 
life and that life loses when youth goes ? But indeed I shall 
be old when the change of the seasons, when all the earth 
offers of sound and odour will not cause me to dream, to hope 
and to forget. 


CHAPTER II 


“She is appointed unto thee from the beginning.” 

Tobit . 

It was my mother who taught me to read and write, who 
told to me the stories of the Bible, all of which excel in beauty 
and simplicity what I have since read. It was Monsieur 
Godot, however, the town archivist and a man of letters, who 
instructed me in mathematics, in Latin and in Greek. He 
was a little old gentleman of a shrivelled hut cheerful ap* 
pearance who bore an insistent resemblance to a grasshopper, 
but a grasshopper, mind you, with a vocation and a great deal 
of manner. To see him draw off his cotton gloves and press 
this limp and ancient hand-gear against his breast, to see him 
turn out his toes, loop his legs and how to my mother, was to 
see the very effigy of politeness. Monsieur Godot’s coat was 
cut beyond the ken and remembrance of man. His preter- 
naturally pointed chin was encased in a choker with custard- 
coloured discs. Nevertheless it was from him that I learnt 
to love the poets. Monsieur Godot would say — “Now we will 
take up the dead languages,” and my heart would stand still 
as though he had said, “I will evoke some ghosts to entertain 
you.” He would read to me in his high voice in the notes of 
a fife a translation of how Ulysses crossed the waste of 
waters, and the hair of my head would rise as though the 
breath of the vast outer world had blown through our little 
room. 

I do not know why, but when I was a child everything 
that was, to me, beautiful hurt me as much as it enchanted me 
— yes, Monsieur Godot read to me, and every quarter of an 
hour the chimes of St. Erangois, our parish church, inter- 

11 


12 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


rupted him. A pot of geraniums stood on the window-sill, a 
square of sky showed between the opposite houses, ajnong the 
gables the swallows darted, and I who am now a man and 
have lost all the finer joys and perceptions, I listened, a child 
then, and my soul expanded to the voices of the oldest poets. 

My childhood was one long lullaby that nothing inter- 
rupted, not even the bitter days of 1870, the rancour and 
anguish of 1871. 

Monsieur Godot was a disciple of Michelet; he had all 
the great master’s veneration for women. He always spoke 
of the sex with the most becoming gravity. Women were, 
according to Monsieur Godot, semi-invalids, martyrs, crea- 
tures of candour and tenderness, but born to persecution and 
to be the prey of men. It was my tutor, I make no doubt, 
who implanted in my mind the semi-mystic adoration I had 
for women, for my mother, especially when I was a boy. 
Even in childhood I felt my responsibility towards what 
Monsieur Godot called the “weaker sex.” He had so im- 
pressed upon me that a man’s first duty is a chivalrous devo- 
tion to women as to set me thinking how when I was grown 
I could best defend these defenceless and delicate creatures. 
Poor Monsieur Godot, I do not know what may have been 
Sis experience of the “weaker sex,” the only point of this 
book is to confide mine. 

Monsieur le Cure, who dined with my mother Thursdays 
and Saturdays, had quite another notion of women. He made 
no bones about saying that they were much more easily 
damned than men. They attracted hell fire, and this fatal 
combustibility of theirs made them pathetic in my eyes. 
Monsieur le Cure saw woman as the early Catholic Church 
saw her, as a creature naturally impure, but saved some- 
times through the renunciation of the flesh or the pangs of 
motherhood. If, however, or so Monsieur le Cure would 
admit, looking at my mother, a woman had put her heel like 
St. Theresa on the vanities of the world, she was doubly a 


A WOMAN’S MAN 13 

saint; then my mother would how, and in the silence that 
ensued our clock ticked on in its decent, muffled voice. 

One of the acutest pleasures of my childhood was to hear 
my mother and Monsieur le Cure talk of my father. I can- 
not analyse the sensation. I did not remember my father 
and I did not love him, but the lowered tones that were used 
to speak his name, the consequential faces that were assumed, 
thrilled me with excitement. I felt somehow that my father’s 
death was the crime of the world, and that his body must be 
close to us — perhaps behind the arm-chair over there. Mon- 
sieur le Cure had been the confessor of my father while my 
father lived in Tours. The priest’s condolatory manner was 
sincere. Sentiments are slow to wear out in the provinces. 

We had other visitors too, the aristocracy of Tours came 
to see us — in those days we were very grand. In the morning 
our gardener entered in felt shoes and rubhed our parlour 
floor with his feet till it shone ; my mother got out the Dres- 
den set, no one was allowed to carry it from the cupboard to 
the mantel-piece but herself. When she had gone from the 
room, I would climb on a chair. All the dainty ladies and 
pretty gentlemen smiled at me as though to say: “Is it not 
foolish to keep us in the dark so long?” With my finger I 
would smooth their little blonde heads. They were quite cold 
from being hidden away in the cheerless cupboard. 

Oh, the excitement that throbbed through our house on a 
visiting day. Yvonne, my mother’s prized servant, an old 
Bretonne, stood before her stove as tense as though she were 
driving in a chariot race, and when she spoke to me it was in 
a deep, stern voice. I had done nothing wrong, but instantly 
I felt guilty and something fluttered in my throat. 

“Maman, they are coming,” I would announce, slipping 
into the parlour in the dusk. I had seen through the bars of 
the vestibule window a family carriage drive up to our door. 
“They are coming, Maman.” Then my mother would rise 
and light the four candles. As the door opened, she would fix 
me with her eyes as though to say — “With each visit let your 


14 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


manners show an improvement” — and my heart began to heat 
wildly for fear these people for whom I cared nothing should 
think me impolite. Such paradoxical sensations make up the 
mystery of childhood. 

There was a long stretch of shiny floor between the tea- 
table and the door. My mother and I would come half the 
way and the visitors the rest. We settled in a circle — there 
was much bowing, kissing of hands, sipping of tea, hut little 
conversation. These folk have nothing to do with my story, 
I will not describe them. They were the average grown be- 
ings that make children think so poorly of us. 

As for friends of my own, I had none — not at this time. 
There, was the void of my childhood. At least I had no hoy 
friends, I had a girl friend but I did not like her because my 
mother was forever telling me that this child was such a 
good child. When she came to see me it was with her father 
and mother who were exceedingly rich, Monsieur and Ma- 
dame Anselme, the only manufacturers my mother received. 
Bernardette — that was the name of this little girl — was por- 
tioned off to my care. She was exceedingly plump and round 
as I remember her and dressed in balloony white. When she 
and I sat on the sofa together and her parents and my mother 
clucked indulgently over us, I noticed the little girl’s feet 
did not reach the ground. Thus we stayed, side by side, mute 
and miserable. My mother would signal me with her eye- 
brows to talk to this child, hut when I tried to question her, 
Bernardette would hide her face against the hack of the sofa. 
“Take Bernardette to see the flowers, Armand,” my mother 
would say, and I would lug the child off the sofa. “Don’t go 
near the fountain,” my mother would call after us in her 
even, chill voice. 

So it was only gradually after circling round the flower- 
beds that Bernardette and I came to the fountain. The spray 
was light like an ostrich feather and deep down under the 
water the sad-faced carps were mouthing. I was proud that 
Bernardette should see I had a pool, a slimy green pool of my 


15 


A WOMAN’S MAN 

own. I told her one could drown in it as well as not. She 
was standing a little in front of me all fluffy and white like a 
tiresome angel, and I remember a sudden beastly impulse to 
push her into the water. Fortunately just then she turned 
about, she cocked up her cherub face to harken to a bird in 
a tree and I recalled what Monsieur Godot had said about 
women — how they roused what was worst in men — how piti- 
ful they were, so I took Bernardette by the hand ; I led her 
home, and as I was pulling her up our steps on to the veran- 
dah I remember thinking I was rather a fine fellow. 


CHAPTER III 


“For I was the son of my father, tender and only beloved in the 
sight of my mother.” 


Proverbs. 


Our old servant Yvonne used to say that since we every 
one of us were born into the world naked, we’d best be grate- 
ful if only for a shirt. My mother did not share this senti- 
ment, she was not rich and the fact embittered her. She 
was born to have had the charge of a fortune, yet only once 
during her husband’s meteoric career had she had the hand- 
ling of any considerable sums; this money, made by my 
father at his profession, had gone to insure him a position in 
Paris. He, by dying, had put an end to this income and left 
my mother as poor as when he married her. 

I sometimes think that life is sweetened by the very diffi- 
culty of living, but my mother took economy to heart. I do 
not mean by this that she was not innately frugal and thrifty 
— I believe she would have remained so had I made a mil- 
lion — but her pride, stiff as Lucifer’s, rebelled against the 
petty household thrifts. She wanted money, not from avar- 
ice but because money could give her what she coveted — con- 
sideration, power. 

I remember one morning watching my mother adding up 
the day-book. We were in the store-room, a bright, sunny 
place redolent of spices. On a shelf along the wall were 
ranged blue paper cones of sugar, jars of cinnamon-sticks, 
bottles of olives and sucre d’orge, while in the place of hon- 
our was throned the tea-caddy, a tin box gay with mandarins 
and almond-eyed ladies of whom I dreamt at nights. My 
mother was counting and heaving sepulchral sighs — I felt 
sorry for her. My eyes roamed over the room, over the 

16 


A WOMAN’S MAN- 


17 


bright-coloured comestibles, and my inability to help her 
hurt me. Once I grew a man things should be different, she 
need hever count again nor save — I told her so. “I only ask 
of my son to be honourable and upright,” said my mother and 
began on another column, but I had seen her eyes flash and I 
knew it was to drag us out of mediocrity that she was train- 
ing me. 

I was grown a long thin boy by now and it was time to 
think of taking me out of the tuition of Monsieur Godot 
and of sending me to school. The morning of my first class 
day when my mother kissed me good-bye, how my heart beat ! 
In my mind’s eye, I see us both — the parlour is cold and fra- 
grant, on the mantel-piece tapers a Sevres jar crammed with 
pot-pourri, beneath it stands my mother, erect, very pale; 
one feels she is a widow, and I, the delicate woman-bred child 
in my black alpaca apron, pressing my new school-books 
against my breast, bend my head under my mother’s kiss, my 
head cropped close as a convict’s. I was on the threshold of 
life, my mother told me. I went off to school, my heart beat- 
ing to suffocation. 

In this story I seem forced to tell that I am often afraid, 
and it is true I have been afraid more or less my life long, 
yet I would not have you think I am a coward. Once in a 
fight, I never yet disgraced myself — no, it is a sort of moral 
terror that haunts me, a trembling of the spirit. I am afraid 
of life, of what it will bring me, of what it has made me feel, 
of the violence of my sensations. Before facts, before daily 
incidents, the artist — and I am one — I use the word not in 
self praise, but to discriminate between the imaginative and 
the practical man — feels his weakness, his incompetence, the 
aspen-like qualities of his soul. I think this morbid sensi- 
bility was encouraged in me by my mother. Like many 
women, she saw life out of drawing, out of proportion. A 
waistcoat button fell and she was sure God knew of it. In 
every occurrence she divined the thickening plot of life. She 
taught me to live constantly tense, on the strain. No inci- 


18 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


dent seemed to her unimportant and I made out of every 
hourly event a sort of trial of my soul. My heart was con- 
stantly thumping, like a student’s on the eve of an examina- 
tion. 

How I have suffered through my life and how uselessly. 
What an agony were those first days of school for me. I held 
up the lid of my desk and behind it I cried scalding tears, 
while in the stifling study hours I heard the drip-drop of a 
cistern in the yard — that damp, reeking yard where I 
dragged through my recreations. 

At first I had no friends — I who had so wanted to play 
with other boys. I stood way off in a corner, mute and stiff. 
The others brushed past me, kicking buoyant, striped balls. 
Sadly I chewed the bread and chocolate I had brought from 
home and I thought “Never shall I like them nor they me.” 
I was not one of them. I understood that my mother’s gen- 
tle, cold hand had led me away from my kind and made of 
me another creature. 

In all my school years, I had only one friend, and a genial 
scallywag he was — his name was Ernest Bonnet, his father 
kept the circulating library of Tours and let me browse in its 
musty precincts. In this dark and smelly room, the world of 
books opened for me. What imagination and what sight I 
brought to those humid, flimsy pages. I brought the heart 
and the eyes of youth. Meanwhile Ernest, who never read, 
perched on a high stool and recounted entirely fictitious sto- 
ries of the cruelty of his father. I had best be careful, he 
would say, his father might at any moment spring out from 
behind the counter and choke me, one never knew where the 
old man might be lurking. Eor a while I believed Ernest 
and I used to flinch whenever I caught sight of the bald pate 
of kind old Monsieur Bonnet. Indeed Ernest was the most 
convincing liar I have ever known. It was impossible to 
doubt him if he but looked at you with his round, innocent 
eyes, pale as skimmed milk and set exaggeratedly far apart 
in a face as falsely ingenuous as that of a gnome. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


19 


Ernest was my friend, I say, and yet, looking back, it 
seems to me that he meant very little in my childhood. Ow- 
ing perhaps to my mother’s stern ascendency, I never knew 
the sweetness of an entire intimacy with some one of my 
years. Always wherever I was, my mother’s will dominated 
me. In spirit she stood at my shoulder warning, “Armand, 
do not confide, for every confidence will weaken you ; do not 
lean on any one, Armand, for what little strength you have 
will go,” and indeed her own life was unsweetened by any 
confidante or interest outside myself. 

Sometimes as I bent of nights over my studies, I caught 
her interchanging glances with my father’s portrait — I say 
interchanging glances, for to my imagination the copy of 
my father’s eyes appeared to answer her gaze. The canvas 
and she seemed to understand each other. They were fore- 
seeing, planning my life. The effect on me of this ghostly 
dialogue was to redouble my sense of responsibility, my 
nervousness of events, my fear of the future. I felt too small, 
too weak to satisfy my mother’s ravenous ambition. I wanted 
to stay the age I was for ever, but in the hush of our old 
house, in the lull of the provincial town, my childhood ebbed 
away too rapidly. 

The day of my first Communion came and found me a 
gentle-faced hobbledehoy immaculately dressed in black like 
an immature bridegroom. I was at this age deeply reli- 
gious — mystic, rather — for what I experienced at church 
and at the confessional was poignant and ecstatic as are the 
vague longings, the premonitions of love, to an ignorant 
child. My confirmation passed for me to the pumping of my 
heart. After the ceremony, as I passed out under the Cathe- 
dral arch the sight of the sky dizzily blue made me catch my 
breath, for an instant I had the conviction that I was look- 
ing — not into space, into ether, but at the underside of the 
pavement of the house of God. 

That same evening, to celebrate my first Communion my 
mother gave a little fete ; our habitual guests came, Monsieur 


20 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


le Cure, Monsieur Godot, Monsieur and Madame Anselme 
and their daughter, Bernardette. Since my earliest remem- 
brance, these folk always dined with us on holidays, such as 
All Saints, the Anniversary of the Saint after whom I was 
named, and New Year’s Eve — a sober party we were that 
broke up soon after Yvonne had brought in the camomile tea 
at the decent hour of ten. 

Now on the night of my first Communion, to my mother, 
Monsieur Anselme, the manufacturer, said : 

“Here is your son, Madame, grown a fine fellow, what’s 
to be done with him, eh ?” 

My mother did not immediately answer. Over her cup 
her eyes sought my father’s picture, and all our guests fol- 
lowing her gaze assumed, with the exception of little Ber- 
nardette, expressions of official mourning. 

“Well, what do you yourself say, young man ?” Monsieur 
Anselme boomed out at me in his sonorous snoring voice. 

I was standing near the table very straight in my new 
clothes. I looked at my mother. 

“Armand,” said she speaking for me, “has no vocation 
for his father’s work. I regret it, a surgeon may do much 
good. Armand’s interest is in writing, I cannot judge of the 
merit of his prose, he is a child now and his mind is a 
child’s, but Monsieur Godot assures me there is promise in 
some verses of his, a fluent style. His father, you will re- 
member, Monsieur le Cure, expressed himself well.” 

Monsieur le Cure bowed to my mother and then to my 
father’s portrait, while Monsieur Godot, who was the most 
impressionable of men, sighed fit to blow the table over, 
and in the silence that ensued we all laid down our cups gin- 
gerly. 

We sat very still, all except Monsieur Anselme who fussed 
with his fob and scowled. 

“You appear preoccupied, Monsieur,” said my mother to 
the manufacturer. 

“Mon Dieu, Madame,” quoth he, “I have nothing to say 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


21 


against any trade so long as it be honest and will feed its 
man. But look you, this literature is an uncertain business ; 
why only the other day I read in the newspaper that Mon- 
sieur de Balzac died poor, yet if ever a man blackened reams 
of paper, it was he. No, no, Madame, let your son look about 
him before he decides on his career. Are you not of my 
mind, Henriette ?” he added as he shot a glance across at his 
wife. 

Over her billowy bosom, she nodded, while significantly 
with her plump hand she smoothed the head of her little 
daughter who sat beside her on a footstool, hands clasped, 
eyes cast down like the print of a good girl in a child’s 
primer. 

“Monsieur,” stated my mother, “though I regret to say 
it of a man of our town, the works of Monsieur de Balzac 
were immoral, and God would not permit him to thrive on 
them. If my son puts pen to paper, it will be to help the 
world, I trust.” 

Whenever my mother spoke in this voice, every word she 
said weighed on my shoulders like a burden, and the fanci- 
ful thoughts of childhood fled away and hid themselves. 


CHAPTER IV 


“The wind bloweth whence it listeth and thou hearest the sound 
thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it 
goeth.” . . . 

St. John. 

My mother was jealous of every hour I spent out of our 
house, jealous of my school life, jealous above all of my 
friendship for Ernest. She always spoke of him with an 
acrid writhing of the lips, pretended to forget his name, re- 
ferred to him as “your young friend — you know — the one 
who has such provincial manners.” It was disloyal but I did 
not mind hearing him criticised by my mother. I had 
breathed too often the atmosphere of Feminine Leagues and 
Charitable Committees not to revel in false commiseration 
and spiteful gossip. All this sighing, wagging of the head 
over poor Ernest tickled my vanity, made me feel I was his 
better. 

I have written to very little purpose if you have not per- 
ceived that at this age my disposition was somewhat that of 
a girl. I had all the impressionability combined with the 
pettiness of character we gallantly denominate as feminine. 
The opposition of temperament between the sexes is to my 
mind as much due to education and convention as to funda- 
mental traits. Bring up a boy as I was brought up, tend him 
till he grows delicate, watch over him till you make him 
secretive, tenderly spy on him as my mother did on me, and 
you graft on him at least for the time another and a complex 
nature. 

What vigorous, hearty boy such as I ought to have been 
would have passed the hours that I did leaning at my win- 

22 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


23 


dow reading in my brain as it were, telling myself stories 
whose unforeseen incidents and startling climaxes held me 
as enthralled as though I were turning the pages of some 
magic book. My God, what would I not give to hear again 
the inner voice dictating, to find in my mind once more an in- 
exhaustible spring of ideas, a flow of words, to have always 
at my command a shadow play, to know again the elation of 
creative work. 

In my room under the eaves I would take pencil in hand 
and form such words as my heart prompted. Sometimes 
what I wrote was unintelligible to me — I told of countries 
where I had never been, where under the white-hot stars 
palms shook their dishevelled leaves, where from the branches 
in the night serpents uncoiled and fell to earth with a soft 
thud. I liked the stories of no one else as much as I did my 
own. 

My mother soon put an end to these tropical fancies, she 
made me harness my Pegasus, she inspired me to write a con- 
nected story and go through with it from start to finish. 
When with a beating heart I had read it to her, she passed her 
verdict on it. My story had no moral, it did not champion 
the right, it could do no good ; she did not like it, she said. I 
was deeply hurt ; I felt, though I could not have expressed it, 
that my mother’s views of art were utilitarian, that often 
what is most beautiful is most useless, that while a spittoon 
is more serviceable than a sonnet yet I preferred the latter. 

After this for days I would not touch a pencil ; it was only 
by degrees and surreptitiously that I began once more to 
write down what the inner voice dictated. It spoke differ- 
ently since my mother had found fault with me. It told me 
grave, sober little stories, prose-samplers as it were not with- 
out a quaint charm. 

This is what I might call the “mother-stratum” in my 
work, for now when I look back on my life, when I take a 
bird’s-eye view of some forty years of literary striving and 
what has seemed to me at the time individual thought, this 


24 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


fact is made plain: never have I written a sentence, except 
as a very yonng child, in which I have laid my sonl hare but 
always some hand — a woman’s hand — has guided my pen 
and spoken through me as through a medium. Only the 
other day I turned over some old manuscripts of mine and 
through the divergent pages I could trace my entire heart’s 
history — yes, just as the geologist boring through the earth 
finds different strata. 

It is inevitable, I admit, that the artist should grow, 
should change through his emotional experiences. Emotion 
is the food of his talent, not thought — still it seems a fearful 
thing that an author should be nothing but an seolian harp 
answering to the breath of some woman. Nowadays since I 
have made, or rather since circumstances have made for me 
something of a name, young men with literary ambitions 
come to me and ask, “Have I a future ?” — at the risk of being 
thought a sentimental crank, I answer, “I will tell you what 
your near future is if you will tell me whom you love now.” 
For the woman shapes the artist, she forms him spiritually 
just as materially she forms the child in her womb — she 
makes or she destroys talent, she breathes as God did into 
the clay, and who can withstand her, for her power is not in 
herself but in her background — terrific nature. 

But to go back to the days when I was still a child, when 
the voice of imagination spoke to me unsolicited. I wish 
every young author as ecstatic hours as those I spent at my 
deal table before the window ; I wish him, too, more time for 
reverie than I found, for what with school in the morning, 
riding and fencing lessons in the afternoon, I could only edge 
in an hour here and there for the dear task of dreaming and 
scribbling. As for Sundays they were lost days to me, my 
mother not permitting me to put pen to paper, yet I could 
have worked well on the Sabbath owing to the chiming of 
the church bells, music of any kind stimulating my imag- 
ination. 

On Sundays as on week-days, I rose at six. One could 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


25 


keep the Sabbath remembering it was a day of rest without 
acting for all that like a slug-a-bed, or so my mother would 
sometimes say as she bent over me in the morning and woke 
me to the ringing of the bells. I needed not their brazen 
assurance to know what day it was. I had but to look at my 
mother’s face set in its Sabbath expression, at her puce silk 
gown, her church attire. I had hut to breathe deep to feel 
the Sunday atmosphere, for in a provincial town the very 
air is different on the day of prayer. 

At this hour if it were winter, the sun would hang low — 
orange, like the yolk of a monster egg, — the birds would chirp 
in a sickly, excited tremor, and I, passing to early Mass with 
my mother, would observe how her pale face, framed by her 
bonnet-strings, kept in spite of the frost as white as a spec- 
tre’s. Our servant, Yvonne, came on behind attending us 
to church. The old Bretonne never relinquished the starched 
head-dress of her people and the jaunty short skirt. She had 
exchanged the felt slippers she wore in the house for a pair 
of sabots. Her cotton stockings were whiter than the frost 
about us. I remember the incongruity of her dumpy legs 
exposed nearly to the knee as compared with her face set in 
the deep lines of servitude, as sober and as illumined as St. 
Anne’s. She carried our prayer-books and said her prayers 
all the way. I would keep looking hack to see that she was 
not ran over, for she was as helpless in the streets as she was 
a competent tyrant at home. 

Early Mass was always something of an emotional ex- 
perience to me. In the first hours of the day, the world had 
not got its grip on me, the voice of the organ stirred me, the 
shrill and unearthly trills of the choir vibrated through my 
flesh, and after the service as I followed my mother out into 
the day, I was dazed still by the incense, mesmerised by the 
galaxy about the altar. 

I liked Sundays best in summer, for then our drive out 
of town to the house of Monsieur Anselme — my mother and 
I always lunched with the manufacturer on a Sabbath — was 


26 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


sheer pleasure all the way between the hedges of May blos- 
som. On a Sunday then after Mass as soon as we had break- 
fasted, my mother and I, a certain hired landau — my mother 
always had the same, she said it was well hung — drew up 
before our door. A rolling, pitching, ramshackle affair it was 
that swayed like a swing and stunk of old leather. I can 
recall the sickly sensation that used to creep over me as we 
rocked along the road. My mother always insisted on our 
riding with our back to the horses to protect ourselves, as she 
said, against the currents of air; the sight of the front seat 
facing us majestically empty while we balanced on the strap- 
ontin, always gave me the impression that we were taking the 
ghosts of our ancestors to drive. 

It was a relief to me when Monsieur Godot accompanied 
us, as he would sit by my mother and I was allowed to share 
the driver’s seat. I would feel like a passenger who has 
emerged from the hold on to the upper deck. When my 
mother was not looking, I would take the reins from the man 
and a tingling sense of adventure would come over me — one 
of childhood’s exalted disproportionate emotions. 

Hawthorn and lilacs overtopped Monsieur Anselme’s 
fence as we drove through the gateway, while in the middle 
of the lawn a plaster figure of a boy was busy taking a thorn 
out of his foot. 

Monsieur and Madame Anselme were on the porch to 
greet us. They looked as prosperous, as bow-windowed as 
their house. They asked after our drive, and you might have 
thought we had travelled through fire and water to hear their 
commiserating questions, their sighs of relief, their wheezy 
chorus of “good, good, so much the better.” After such a 
hazardous journey, Monsieur Anselme felt called upon to 
offer us some orgeat or some orange-flower water, while Mar 
dame Anselme went to fetch her daughter. 

The little girl would come down to us tripping decorously 
at her mother’s side. I remember the sweep of her white 
eyelids, habitually lowered ; she would curtsey to my mother, 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


27 


“Good day, Madame,” she would chirp, and to me, “Good 
day, Monsieur Armand,” and I recall even now her voice 
ringing with the inane sweetness of youth. “Armand, salute 
Mademoiselle,” my mother would say to me and I would 
knock my heels together and make Mademoiselle Bernar- 
dette the best how of which I was capable. 

It seems only yesterday that this child faced me, that the 
gold cross at her throat rose and fell with her breath, that 
she smiled and two dimples set not quite opposite each other 
eddied into place in either cheek. Yet no glass will ever 
again reflect this face. I am perhaps the only being left to 
remember it, and then only with the aid of a daguerreotype 
that fades with each day. 


CHAPTER y 


“Hell and destruction are never full so a man’s eyes are never 
satisfied.” 


Proverbs. 


I think it was to Ernest Bonnet I first confided the plan 
of my book on the “Acquiring of Magnetic Force.” It was 
on an afternoon in December of the year 1876. We were 
passing the statue of Balzac, the master on his pedestal 
crouched brooding with hunched shoulders, lowering brow, 
his lap full of snow. I remember I preached to Ernest, for I 
was an idealist of sixteen then, a disciple of Rousseau’s, some- 
thing of a prig and I liked the sound of my voice. I told 
him that temptation is a force that can be utilised, not only 
as the moralist assures by offering an opportunity for the de- 
velopment of character, but in a psychic sense. I explained 
that we, every one of us, are magnetic centres giving out rays 
of thought, of feeling just as an electric plant gives out waves 
of electricity. Every temptation to which we yield is so 
much waste of the magnetic current just as every temptation 
we overcome, every sensual desire we crush, every confidence 
we keep to ourselves, is so much bottling as it were of the 
vital force. I never wrote this book by the way ; others have 
written it since and better than I could have hoped to do it, 
but the thought was mine and it was my mother who in- 
spired it. Storing moral force was the policy of her life ; she 
stored her tastes, her woman’s vanities, her weaknesses, what- 
ever they may have been she packed them away in her heart 
like spiritual fuel. 

I remember I spoke to Ernest very eloquently that snowy 
afternoon while he, sniffing in the cold, looked at me out of 
the crack of his eye and when from sheer loss of breath I was 

28 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


29 


silent, he smiled genially and swore my book would never 
sell. I lifted my arms to the grey sky incensed by his mer- 
cantile views. Theoretically I was right, the big man rides 
his nature on the curb; had I but proved strong enough to 
practise what I preached, had I not shifted with every wind, 
grasped any hand, drunk from every cup, I might have grown 
the great artist I ought to have been. 

It was not till I was almost eighteen that an event oc- 
curred to change the lilt of my boyhood, to vary the rhythm 
of my life. This event was my initiation into love, that is 
if the word love may be applied to a sordid adventure. For 
two years before, I had been preoccupied by vague disturbing 
thoughts. I was a decent-minded boy, but a French school 
is no monastery, and I had heard more than a whisper of the 
outside world. The talk of the Lycee is not inducive to 
poetic reveries. Here I never heard the word of “love” or 
“woman” without being favoured with some coarse story, yet 
I passed through this turbid atmosphere comparatively clean- 
minded. As a matter of fact I kept much to myself and in 
spite of my school-mates, in spite of the Parisian comic pa- 
pers, woman was to me the mystic fiancee, the rose of the 
world, the muse, the creatress whom I feared and fearfully 
loved and whom I felt moving towards me through the world 
holding in the circle of her arms sensation, adventure, ro- 
mance, the nucleus of life. 

On a Thursday, our half-holiday, Ernest and I would 
walk far out into the country. He would tell me of his sen- 
timental adventures, of ladies who pined for him — all lies. 
But I pretended to believe him so that we could talk of love 
as though we knew it. 

I remember one evening, we were passing a deserted mill, 
a flock of crows crossed spotting the sky, and the sun red 
as a splurge of hot coals was sinking. Ernest and I sat down 
on the river-bank — we ceased to speak, the lush grass all 
about us gave out its rank, pungent smell. I was oppressed 
with the warmth of the evening, with the sense of the promise 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


so 

and the plenitude of life. I realise now that on this evening 
I had come to the crux of mj boyhood. I was like an instru- 
ment waiting to be played on, harmony could he drawn from 
me or discord. 

It was soon after this in the little theatre off the rue Na- 
tional that I first saw her. She was called Marianne — I 
have forgotten her last name if I ever knew it. She stood at 
the end of the chorus nearest to the footlights. To me she 
was the impersonation of “Beauty” of “Woman.” When 
her charcoaled eyes roamed over the theatre and rested a 
moment full on my face, when she darted at me the glance 
that recognised me as a man, as a prey, I tingled with sen- 
sual pleasure. I tried to brazen out her look, but I was too 
dazzled by her, too ignorant of love, too green at the game. 
I could not meet her glance more than an instant. The mus- 
cles round my mouth would stiffen, my eyelids grow heavy, 
and my eyes shift. 

I was ashamed of this weakness. I said to myself, “She 
will think no woman has ever interested herself in me be- 
fore,” and I tried to look at her with impudent meaning, hut 
under the quick riposte of her eyes, I felt my face assume a 
sullen, hang-dog look. 

Night after night I went to the theatre, the summer 
vacation was on and my mother made no objection. She her- 
self had never stepped into a play-house hut she said my 
father had had no prejudice against the stage and therefore 
she could not forbid me to interest myself in the drama. I 
remember I thought this talk silly and I, who till then had 
never criticised my mother even in thought, suddenly decided 
that she was provincial, narrow-minded, out of touch with 
the age. 

My mother, my idol till then, was deposed from my heart 
and I set up in her place, a little chorus girl who wagged her 
legs with a mechanical naughtiness. Instantly with my 
change of cult, my outlook on life, my manner of thought, 
my work, everything in me altered. From being imaginative, 


31 


A WOMAN’S MAN 

I became prosaic, from studious, I became lazy, from idealis- 
tic, I became sensual. 

I was consumed with an animal hunger to get to know 
this creature of pink flesh and heart-quickening glances. I 
had by heart all the rhythmic gestures of the ballet. I used 
to wait for certain postures of this woman, certain poses 
that conveyed most pleasure to me. I knew every cue that 
would cause her to turn, to undulate, to stretch up her arms 
revealing the shadow of the arm-pits and I lived in a fever 
for this creature who was nothing but paint, powder, liquid 
white, whose glance of love was taught by necessity. 

It was outside the theatre that the girls of the ballet 
really made their living. I knew this, so even to exchange 
glances with this woman seemed to me deliciously sinful. I 
understood that she was surprised that I did not come to the 
stage-door to meet her and one night — I always sat in the 
same seat so she knew where to look for me — after she had 
held me fidgeting under a long insistent glance, she avoided 
looking at me again, sulked with me and sent me home miser- 
able. 

Next night her eyes again refused to meet mine. After 
the performance, armed with the courage of despair, I went 
out of the theatre and loitered in the back street where I 
knew she must pass. 

Woman after woman came through the stage door; each 
time I thought it was she; then suddenly I started, I found 
her at my elbow, she had come furtively. She had no longer 
the lanquor of taught graces, her manner was sharp and 
crafty. Under her picture-hat her features were bigger than 
I had thought them. She put a card in my hand, I saw 
something written on it ; she hesitated, half turning away on 
her downtrodden heel, waiting. I was as disappointed, to 
find her so obliging, as if I had been the keeper of her honour. 
I was ashamed and went away from her quickly like a thief. 


CHAPTER VI 


“Stolen waters are sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant, but 
be knoweth not that the dead are there and that her guests are 
in the depth of hell.” 

Proverbs. 

But in thinking it over, I began to idealise the adven- 
ture. The back street in which I had met Marianne grew 
in my memory to be the very lane of romance. I kissed the 
card she had given me. Her address was written on it, there 
were greasy finger-marks on the paste-board. I tried to think 
it was not so when she had handed it to me. 

I dared not see her, I dared not go near the theatre, I 
was in a tumult of emotions, all the while my pity and my 
contempt for my mother were growing daily. I remember 
one evening, watching her at supper, I thought “see how 
much care she takes to wash that bunch of cherries in her 
finger-bowl — is hers a life?” And my heart expanded to 
think that my life had not yet begun, that to-night a woman 
was thinking of me, waiting for me. 

“Shall I go ?” I asked myself this question hourly, but in 
my heart I knew that go I would. 

Eive days after I had met Marianne, in the afternoon I 
set out ostensibly for Ernest’s house, but at the corner of the 
street, I turned in the opposite direction, I went down into 
the poor part of the town where the woman lived. I remem- 
ber the day, the air was close, scraps of newspaper rose from 
the gutter and fluttered in a sultry wind. My heart was 
drumming as much with fright as excitement, I was expect- 
ant of the acme of pleasure, at the same time I was sad as I 
had never been before and all the while as I hurried, a phrase 
from the Bible — although a Boman Catholic I was a reader 

32 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


33 


of this book because of the beauty of its language — all the 
while, I say, a phrase kept reiterating in my brain. “He 
passed her corner and he went the way of her house, in the 
evening, in the twilight, in the black and dark night, and 
behold there met him a woman . . . and he passed her 

corner and he went the way of her house . . ” And I 

lifted my hand and I knocked on her door. 

She came to open it herself. She was the first to speak, 
I remember. She begged pardon for the bell being out of 
order; she had only just moved up here from the ground 
floor, she told me, and she asked me to come in. 

The sordid, the delirious, the melancholy intrigue ! That 
day as I was leaving my mistress, I lifted the blind that 
blocked out her window. Her room was under the eaves, I 
could see the roofs of other houses and way down below, the 
sweep of the Loire. As I was looking at the town I loved 
and for which I meant to write, Marianne came behind me 
and put her arms about my neck. I saw her common hands 
clasped on my breast in the sunlight and I suffered a sudden 
revolt, a disgust of this woman. As I left her, I swore to 
myself I would not come back — in four days I returned to 
her. Fastidious as I was I could not keep away from her. 
From the day I knocked on her door, this woman absorbed 
my life ; my work, my soul, the spiritual part of me was the 
first to suffer from my relations with her. I fell into a 
state of mental coma. I could not hang a sentence together. 

For the last year I had been writing a novel, a weak brew 
of Paul and Virginia, an idyll poetic in its way, strangely 
touching too as are the fantasies of youth, but as I read it 
now, after what I now knew of life, this story appeared to 
me bloodless without the stamina of reality. It seemed to 
me if I breathed hard on the page, the ink would evaporate 
and the words fade away. As for my noble, psychological 
work on “The Storing of Magnetic Force through the Over- 
coming of Temptations, etc.,” when I came across it I 
laughed and burnt it in the grate. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


34 

Another singular revulsion of my nature was my entire 
loss of religious faith. According to the Church I was liv- 
ing in a state of sin and as I could not bring myself to con- 
fess fully to Monsieur le Cure, my position was equivocal. 
To make all square with my conscience, I called to mind all 
I had heard of atheism and in one day forsook my belief. I 
was still too afraid of my mother, however, to express my 
change of heart. I attended her to church, I went weekly 
to Confessional though I ceased to confess sincerely. I was 
apparently the same, hut as I watched the congregation how 
to the tinkling of the hell, cross themselves and go through 
what I decided was their mummery, I sneered as might the 
devil if he found himself in a pew. 

I grew self-indulgent, I liked to eat and lie long abed. I 
was far less nervous and melancholy than in the past, more 
prosaic, more sane perhaps, hut it is the very excess of sensi- 
bility that makes the artist. As my morbidity went, so went 
my talent ; all summer long I never put pen to paper. 

To find free hours to visit my mistress, I was forced to 
lie to my mother. I did it very well, I became a thorough 
hypocrite. Ernest was my accomplice. I pretended it was 
with him I had passed the time. I told my mother imagi- 
nary conversations that had taken place between myself and 
my friend. Ernest had said this — I had answered back — • 
we had both laughed. When I was a child a lie had seemed 
to me contemptible, but now I decided that my character had 
strengthened since I felt absolutely no remorse for the deceit 
with which I hoodwinked my mother. My conscience was a 
singular thing; in my opinion I was guiltless so long as I 
was not found out. 

So I continued to live at my mother’s side, a provincial, 
apparently innocent boy. My life was outwardly as before. 
The face, the manner had not changed, but the spark, what 
we hope is immortal in us, was no longer the same, the soul 
was another. 

My life was portioned out to the swinging of the pendu- 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


35 


lum of our parlour clock. So many hours a week for study, 
for prayer, for exercise and as Sunday rotated, early Mass 
again, then lunch with Monsieur and Madame Anselme. 
Their daughter now attended the convent of St. Julien in 
Tours, she boarded there. On a Sunday my mother and I 
would stop for her and drive her out with us to her parents. 

In my mind’s eye, I see her now as she came to us in the 
parloir , the room is dark, the polished floor slippery. She, 
a little near-sighted, comes out of the bright garden, dazzled, 
and at first moves tentatively towards us. Her conventual 
dress lately let down to her ankles makes her seem long and 
narrow ; all the vigour of her body, all the promise of her 
womanhood, are in the heavy braids of hair that hang over her 
shoulders. This dark mane has sapped her strength and left 
her little face anaemic and pinched with the typical pallor 
of the convent-bred girl. She comes towards us with a rush 
of soft words and I cannot express the charm of her greet- 
ing. It is all made up of courtesy and virginal awkwardness. 

Bernardette was four years my junior, but at one time 
she had seemed my senior. She had forced me into feeling 
conscious and afraid, but after my affair with Marianne, I 
outgrew her, I became with her paternally gallant; she was 
my audience for whom I posed and talked big. I rather 
thought she considered me fascinating, or experienced at any 
rate. 

I vaguely knew, I had always known that my mother 
and the Anselmes were anxious to make a match between 
Bernardette and myself. It is strange, but somehow the 
affair did not interest me. Although I knew that she was 
likely to be my wife, I never thought of this young girl with 
either affection or aversion, in fact I never thought of her at 
all. 

At times only, when I was with her, close to her, when 
for instance we were driving together through the country, 
jolting against each other in the heat, I felt for her a sensa- 
tion such as I have never experienced for any other woman. 


36 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


I can only describe the feeling as the sense of voluptuous cru- 
olty I have known when stroking a cat. The soft and supple 
animal undulates under my hand, its fur is electrical mak- 
ing my fingers tingle and suddenly my muscles tighten, I no 
longer know whether I want to caress the beast or crush it. 

Bemardette with her delicacy, her gentleness, aroused 
in me just such a sensuous, cruel impulse, but I hid it craft- 
ily; I always treated her with ceremony. In spite of our 
childhood acquaintance, I called her Mademoiselle and in- 
deed, I hardly dared even to compliment her, she was so stiff 
with purity. 


CHAPTER VII 


''What is my son ? And what is the son of my womb ? 
the son of my vows?” 


And what is 
Proverbs. 


My mother, I think, knew I was slipping away from her. 
In spite of my mechanical politeness, my airs of filial humil- 
ity, she realised how little she was to me now. I sometimes 
caught her studying me with a sad, bewildered look as though 
trying to trace in my face the features of my childhood. 
Poor woman, she whom I had waited on with the foresight 
of a lover, venerated like a god, upon whom all my thoughts 
had centred, whom I had feared to displease as though her 
displeasure could cut me off from salvation, she was now be- 
come to me the veriest stranger, an uncongenial co-dweller 
to whom I felt it was my bad luck to sit opposite at meals. 

Once as she kissed me good-night, she held me off from 
her at arms’ length. “You were at the theatre again to-night, 
my son?” she asked me. “Yes, mother.” She looked me in 
the eyes a moment. “I miss our evenings together,” she 
said, while along her lower eyelids, I saw a humid brightness 
rise, break and slip down her cheeks. Eor the first time, I 
saw my mother’s tears. 

Meanwhile the winter was come, I was back at college. 
Two years before, I had graduated from the preparatory 
school into the Lycee at Tours. My studies since I had met 
Marianne had sunk from brilliant to mediocre, from medio- 
cre to bad, from bad to worse. I, who had been a model pupil, 
a sensitive student who flushed and swallowed when a master 
reprimanded, now merely shrugged when I saw my name 
inscribed the lowest in the class. To be sure, I still rather 
dreaded bringing my book of weekly marks home to my 

37 


38 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


mother, but after I had borne the brunt of her first terroriz- 
ing glance, I ceased to care. I listened, obsequious but ab- 
sent-minded, while she apostrophised my father’s portrait, 
asking what had come over her son, how could she reach him, 
touch his heart, show him the error of his ways, the waste of 
these formative years. 

Had my present mode of life continued, I must have 
failed in my ultimate examination, my Baccalaureate, but 
an event intervened, a sudden occurrence put an end to Mari- 
anne’s influence over me and threw me back again humble 
and dependent on my mother. 

It was a Thursday, a half-holiday I remember, as I was 
crossing the court hurrying towards the door that led up 
flight after flight to my mistress, the concierge called after 
me, “your friend has gone.” “Gone,” I echoed, coming to a 
standstill. The woman nodded and explained that Marianne 
had left Tours. Gone away that very morning with a former 
lover, a promoter of a champagne company. “I am glad for 
Mademoiselle Marianne, she has struck a good affair. She 
asked me to advise you not to make yourself bad blood over 
this business. When two people meet and please each other, 
one must always leave the other first, that is life, hein?” 
Lolling against the door jamb, she told me this genially as 
though it could not hurt me, picking her teeth with a pin 
the while. 

I stood before her dumb. I was angry at first as a thirsty 
man may be who sees his cup wantonly knocked out of his 
hand and spilt, but gradually there crept over me a sense of 
exhilaration, of freedom. I had long ceased to care for Mari- 
anne, she was no longer to me a human being but a habit. I 
turned my back on this house almost with relief. My misr 
tress was gone from Tours, gone out of my life; I need never 
again speak to her. 

As I was going home, I stopped on the Pont de Pierre, 
and in spite of the cold I stood leaning on the railing, dream- 
ing, shaping a story in my mind. It was months since I had 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


39 


heard the voice of inspiration and a solemn joy thrilled me 
as I followed a plot unfolding in my brain working to its 
climax like a peal of music. 

When I started home at last, a hawker passed me. I 
bought some violets of him for my mother. I would excuse 
my absence to her and suggest an outing for my next holiday. 

As I was nearing our house, Ernest from the opposite 
pavement shouted a greeting and joined me. We faced about 
and set out for the Pont de Pierre again. I confided to my 
friend my afternoon’s experience. I began lightly enough, 
but as I talked, I worked myself into a ferment of jealousy 
and rage. I vituperated against women and beating the rail 
of the bridge, I declared that I would write a book in which 
Marianne should be stripped and shown in all her hideous 
moral deformity. Ernest, who loved a scene and was as mali- 
cious as an ape, encouraged me by loud snorts of sympathy 
to talk all through our dinner hour. 

When I realised how late it was and started for home, we 
were both chilled through with the February cold. Ernest 
advised our stepping into the nearest cabaret. I had never 
been in a tavern before and I felt conscious as I ordered 
some hot punch. My sense of wrong and my eloquence were 
so increased by the liquor that I followed Ernest’s lead and 
tried a Chartreuse. 

Outside, further down the street, Ernest called to mind 
that to raise my spirits what I should have taken was an 
absinthe, and he pushed open the door of the cabaret we were 
passing. Protesting feebly, I came in after him. 

The absinthe certainly raised my spirits, but it also af- 
fected my head and legs. I had no habit of stimulants, I was 
only used to a little red wine with my meals. 

When again in the streets I laughed uproariously and that 
Mephistopheles of an Ernest advised me before going home to 
stop in at the Croix d’Or opposite my mother’s house and 
set myself straight with some lager beer. He vowed it 
would steady me instantly. I agreed. After the lager beer, I 


40 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


noticed I no longer carried the violets I had bought for my 
mother. I volunteered to find them. I swore I would go 
after them to the ends of the earth and accompanied by Ern- 
est, I retraced our vinous pilgrimage from tavern to tavern. 
I do not remember whether I found the violets, but an hour 
later, when Ernest left me before a house assuring me it was 
mine and went away from me zig-zagging, I did not have 
them. 

I was very drunk but I knew it. The sense of the sacri- 
lege I was committing in thus stumbling into my mother’s 
house oppressed me, but I longed before everything for my 
bed. I was beginning to feel sick. I brushed the hair out 
of my eyes and plunged up our steps. I rang the bell — my 
mother would never hear of my using a latch-key — I rang 
the bell twice to prove it was no feat. The door opened and 
I smiled cordially on Yvonne who stared at me with wild 
and widening eyes. I passed her quite dexterously and made 
for the stairs, but there I seemed to collapse. I found my- 
self on the lower step telling our old servant that I wa3 late, 
but I had bought some violets for my mother. 

My former nurse, putting her candle on the floor, looked 
guiltily about her, then kneeling she took off my boots, warn- 
ing me the while like an accomplice to avoid my mother, to 
keep quiet. I nodded knowingly, grasped my boots from her 
and hoisted myself upstairs with a great show of caution, 
but on the landing like an accusing angel, there stood my 
mother in her camel’s-hair wrapper. 

I felt I was smiling inanely and that the pair of boots I 
was holding was designating arabesques in the air. “Good- 
night, mother, I have said good-night, I am saying good- 
night,” I shouted in a clarion voice, such as our decent house 
had never echoed to before, and with a firm grip on the balus- 
ter, I got past my mother feeling somehow that the meeting 
had gone off fairly well. 

But once in my room, I reflected I had not told her about 
the violets, I had said good-night to her nicely to be sure. By 


A WOMAN'S MAN 


41 


the way, why had she not answered me ? Why had she looked 
at me with such a look of fear, why it was a look of fright, of 
agony. Could it possibly be that she thought me drunk? 
Nonsense, I had but to talk to her to prove I was only dizzy 
and — oh, very, very sick. 

My bed had so much motion I shut my eyes, but on open- 
ing them again, I saw a sight that almost sobered me. My 
mother was standing by my bed as I had sometimes waked to 
find her as a child. The grey that had grown lately into her 
hair seemed to reproach me; in the candle-light her poor, 
bleached face was drawn in a grimace of reproach and scan- 
dalised pity. She shuddered and as though it was for me 
she felt cold, she drew a blanket over me. I heard myself 
murmur thickly to her as I sank into torpor. 


CHAPTER VIII 


“I remember thee, the tenderness of thy youth, 
betrothal.” 


the love of thy 
Jeremiah . 


The next morning it was a heavy head I lifted from the 
pillow. The roots of my hair ached, my tongue felt like a 
bath-towel partially swallowed and my bed still seemed to 
sway in a land swell. I sank hack again on to the coverlet, 
groaning, and staring at my boots that in the centre of the 
room, looked to my jarred perception to be knocking their 
soles together. 

It was Yvonne who had wakened me drawing the window 
curtains apart. Between the geranium pots I saw the sky, a 
bright, cold and to my sick sight, an offensive blue. I shut 
my eyes and whined. Mumbling conciliation, encourage- 
ment, Yvonne brought me a cup of tea. I hoisted myself into 
a sitting posture and steadied my reeling head against the 
bed-post. I dared not ask Yvonne in what humour my mother 
had waked, what she had said of my escapade, how severe 
was her displeasure against me, nor how long must elapse be- 
fore I was forgiven, nor any other of the fearful questions 
that gripped me. I could only sip my tea in a frantic, noisy 
manner while the old servant having set the room straight, 
laid out some fresh linen and a change of clothes, picked up 
my boots and padded away. 

My physical condition was pitiable, but it was as nothing 
to my state of mind. I was positively crushed with shame — 
what! just to think that my mother’s house, these decorous, 
conventual walls that had never known but muffled voices 
and hushed steps should last night have echoed to the ribald 
laugh of drunkenness. 

46 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


43 


Sighing with pain, I got out of bed ; washed and dressed. 
All the time I was racking my brain thinking how best I 
could propitiate my mother, mollify the look of reproach 
that I foresaw would hurt me from her burning, red-lidded 
eyes, for I was again subject to her every look, I had again 
fallen under her empire. I was as in the past, servilely eager 
to please her. Poor mother, since yesterday, since Marianne 
had left Tours, she had regained her son — her son who could 
as soon breathe without oxygen as without some woman to 
direct his manner of life, to fortify or adulterate his con- 
science. 

By the time I was dressed, I had hit on a plan which 
would serve at least to bridge over the first meeting at break- 
fast. 

When punctually on the stroke of seven I opened the din- 
ing-room door, my heart gave a double knock, for there be- 
hind the coffee service was my mother already entrenched. 
I sidled to my chair and fumbling with my napkin, “Moth- 
er,” I hazarded without daring to meet the glance that I 
knew would blight me from over the coffee-pot. “I think 
that I should never have ... I mean that nothing like last 
night could ever happen again if Bernardette and I were 
engaged to be married.” 

Silence. I slid a glance between the coffee service, hut 
my mother was leaning forward, her face in her hands. I 
could tell nothing from her non-committal morning-cap. In 
the acute silence I stirred my spoon round and round in my 
cup. A whirlpool formed in the midst of my coffee. 

A marriage between Bernardette and myself was, I knew, 
my mother’s cherished scheme. Lately she had broached the 
subject directly. Bernardette was only sixteen, too young 
for a wife my mother had admitted, hut what a pretty little 
fiancee the child would make, and then in a year or two when 
I was twenty-one, I could take Bernardette to church and 
before Monsieur le Maire. Her dot would enable me to buy 
a house, or better still, I could bring my bride here to the 


44 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


house of my childhood so I should he anchored between my 
mother and a rich, sweet, young wife, my future assured, my 
mother soon a grandmother, and all the world in harmony, 
or at least, that was how my mother saw it. 

As for me, when this marital picture was shown me, I 
demurred. To settle down in the provinces at twenty-one 
with a wife of seventeen, seemed to me to be throwing away 
the cup of life untasted, shutting the book of experience with- 
out having read a line. I was in the right, but now just to 
alleviate a disagreeable situation, to make my mother forgive 
my having taken too much to drink, I was ready to go 
through the slavery of a long provincial engagement with all 
it entails of ceremony and official visits. There you have 
my character, all made of weakness and disproportionate im- 
pulse ; just to spare myself a scene, I was ready to yoke my- 
self for life to a little girl I did not love. 

My mother was long in lifting her head from her hands. 
I churned my coffee cold before with a sigh she straightened 
herself, but — yes, her eyes were bright, kind, humid. It 
was no longer question between us of last night’s disgraceful 
occurrence. “Mightn’t you,” I suggested tentatively, “gc* 
this afternoon and propose marriage for me ?” but on consid- 
eration, my mother determined that I should accompany her 
though she agreed to do the talking, and she then and there; 
rang for Yvonne and commanded her to pass to the livery 
stable to order the landau. Next I received my orders, I was 
to go to my room, put on my Sunday suit and my new beaver 
top-hat. 

Still sick from the previous night’s libations, I decked 
myself for my visit of betrothal and joined my mother an 
hour later in the landau. 

It was now nine o’clock in the morning ; we would reach 
the manufacturer’s house between ten and eleven. As we 
trolled out of Tours, my mother began to regret the matu- 
tinal hour she had chosen for her call. Would the Anselmes 
he ready to receive us? For such a visit of ceremony, had 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


45 


we not better have prepared them ? Indeed, my mother, ha- 
bitually so stoical, worked herself into an agreeable state of 
trepidation. 

At heart she was quite sure of the success of our ven- 
ture. If Bernardette had a big dot to offer, we had position 
to give — no title to be sure, but one of the oldest names of 
the French aristocracy. The house of de Vaucourt has made 
history, it stars in the annals. As for my mother’s family, 
a Marechal of France was her ancestor — yes, if her son, Ar- 
mand de Vaucourt, asked a big dot, he was in the right for 
in his turn he gave the inestimable boon of social distinction. 
He raised to the aristocracy whomsoever he chose to make his 
wife. 

I think these were my mother’s thoughts. As for me, I 
still ached from last night’s orgy. The gravity of the en- 
gagement I was about to enter into did not seem to weigh on 
me. I would realise it later, I felt. For the moment I was 
too sick to care. 

We were in the early days of February, I remember. The 
air tingled. Here and there a tentative leaf shook among 
the tracery of the boughs. To my eyes, the country was bleak 
as though the heat would never come, yet a flock of swallows 
passed filing from the south heralding the spring. 

As we lurched along, my mother impressed on me the ne- 
cessity of holding out for a big dot. The Anselmes were rich 
— Bernardette their only child. If we came to sue, it must 
be proudly, asking for as much as we gave. Every time she 
spoke the word “dot” I winced. I will do myself the justice 
to say that no human being was ever less absorbed than I in 
thoughts of money or material advancement. 

I am giving, I feel, a mercenary picture of my mother. 
It is true she valued money, she worshipped it even, but in 
a noble sense — for its power, its diabolical force — just as she 
worshipped fame, courage, virtue. She was no miser and it 
was not for her dot only that she coveted Bernardette for 
me. No, I believe that some instinct told my mother that 


46 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


this pale, meek-mannered little girl was of the right stuff to 
make a wife, had it in her to be the prop, the corner-stone of 
a man’s house. 

“Nous n’irons plus au bois 
Les lauriers sont coupes.” 

So sang Mademoiselle Bernardette, accompanying herself 
the while on the piano, and so when we were ushered into the 
Anselmes’ drawing-room, we found her, my mother and I, 
found her perched on a music-stool trilling like a canary. 
She did not turn about at first, and I had leisure to admire 
her slender, attentive back, to note the shiver that undulated 
her dress as her hands sped up and down the key-board. 

She had graduated from the convent by now, she was tak- 
ing her finishing touches at home, she was quite a young lady. 
Since I had met her last, she had coiled her hair up on her 
head, now for the first time I saw the nape of her neck, it 
was white as though the light had never shone on it. 

She felt our presence, or perhaps heard the rustle of my 
mother’s gown. She started, faced us, and went as pink as 
a peony. I think at sight of our consequential faces, at sight 
of my new beaver hat, carried on a week-day, she knew for 
what we had come. In an instant she grew pale, as pale as 
she had been red before, and looked down at her neat little 
slippers, but I believe in her heart she was glad. Glad to 
be free of the semi-imprisonment that spells girlhood in 
France. Glad to have come into the kingdom of her woman- 
hood, trebly glad in that soon she would know the give and 
take, the partnership of life and need no longer say “mine” 
but “ours.” 

Rocking home in the landau, my mother, the colour hot 
in her cheeks, declared that the visit had been an entire suc- 
cess, that I ought to thank herself and God for having found 
me such a delicious heiress. All along the road, she en- 
larged on the tact she had employed in clinching the engage- . 


A WOMAN’S MAN 47 

ment, though as a matter of fact, the whole affair had been 
settled years before. 

Perhaps because of the pain I was suffering in my head, 
I remember the interview hazily only. After the first inter- 
change of politeness when Madame Anselme divined the 
object of our visit, “Go into the green-house and pick Ma- 
dame de Vaucourt a bouquet,” she said to her daughter, and 
the young girl went out of the room without looking back. 

My mother, having first drawn a handkerchief out of her 
reticule and rested a finger on her temple, gave a verbal 
portrait of me that would have caused an archangel to blush, 
slurring over my last year’s had work at college, she made me 
out a very St. George, treading evil under my heel. Now and 
then she would ask me to back her up in some statement. I 
would rise and modestly how, looking into the crown of my 
hat. 

During my mother’s monologue, Madame Anselme’s nose 
grew pink, her eyes filled with tears and several times she 
burst out with “he’s a dear, good boy,” hut Monsieur An- 
selme was less volcanic. He looked at me so insistently under 
his craggy brows, that I feared he knew how self-indulgent I 
had grown of late. When he spoke, however, it was only to 
complain of the uncertainty of the literary calling and to 
ask me to choose another profession. 

But Madame Anselme was not of his mind. “Let our 
little girl decide, she loves Armand as he is, with his dreams 
that perhaps will not pay ; she loves him or I am much mis- 
taken.” And Madame Anselme looked at me and then at my 
mother and both women laughed tenderly under their breath. 

Bernardette loved me — I had not guessed it, I was sur- 
prised — a little touched too, but my acutest sensation was 
one of regret as at wasted possibilities. I wished I had 
known before that she cared for me, for then I would have 
flirted with her and utilised our walks and drives. Now, 
since I knew that this child could love and that it was I she 
loved, she grew somewhat interesting to me. My heart 


48 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


quickened when in answer to her mother’s call she appeared 
on the threshold of the drawing-room door. 

She stood there a moment, uncertain. The freshness of 
the flowers she had gathered still seemed to hang about her, 
she held a hunch of roses against her breast, her other hand 
was hidden behind her back, her head was inclined a little to 
one side and her smile was ingratiating yet sure of being 
answered. 

She looked at all of us in turn except at me and suddenly, 
her sandals making a soft pit-pat on the floor, she flitted to 
my mother. My mother took from her the roses, put her 
arms about her and kissed her. Whereupon Monsieur An- 
selme rose slowly from his chair. He was a massive man 
and the formidable power of money seemed to lower in his 
eyes. 

“Bernardette,” he said, “come here, and you, also, young 
man. Now see here, Bernardette, does this young fellow suit 
you for a husband ? Do you think he could make you happy ?” 

“Bernardette,” said her mother, “your father wants to 
know if you love Armand?” 

“Love him,” cried my mother, “of course she does, why 
shouldn’t she?” 

Bor answer, Bernardette gave me the hand she had been 
hiding behind her back. A sprig of pansies, the pretty, old- 
fashioned flower of sentiment lay in her palm. 

My mother made a significant grimace at me; it might 
have meant anything, but for once I followed my own in- 
stinct. I laid my hat on the floor, and putting my arm about 
Bernardette, I kissed her on the forehead. As we drew apart, 
I saw her eyes wide, radiant as though the dawn had risen 
in them, and even I, callow youth that I was, still tasting the 
sour wine of the night before, felt that a pitiful waste of love 
goes on in the world. 


CHAPTER IX 


“Let not him that putteth on his harness boast himself as he that 
taketh it off.” 


Kings I. 


When I returned from my betrothal visit, I went to my 
room. As I was stowing away my beaver hat, I saw on the 
shelf of my wardrobe the manuscript of the novel I had flung 
in disgust there at the beginning of my intrigue with Mari- 
anne more than a year ago. I took the page that fell first to 
hand and read it. Coming to the story fresh, I realised 
there was good stuff in it. I thanked Providence I had not 
destroyed it as I had my notes on “Ther Storing of Magnetic 
Force.” 

As I read, the romance, that a year ago had shaped itself 
in my mind, revived. My heroine whom I had forgotten, 
forsaken, pitched into the wardrobe, took form again. From 
out of the leaves of the manuscript, she enchanted me once 
more. I found in this young girl of my fancy a vague re- 
semblance to Bernardette. For once I thought tenderly of 
my little fiancee and her face seemed to flit across my win- 
dow, to waver for an instant between the flower-pots on my 
sill. 

It was late this same night, I remember, as I sat beside 
my big-bellied lamp that gargled petrol, that the spirit of 
creative work descended on me; I forgot headache, nausea, 
and seizing a pencil, a pad, I wrote my soul out into the 
dawn. The divine gift of self-expression had come back to 
me since Marianne was gone. 

My whole life altered now. I became in a few days an- 
other being. I made a full confession to Monsieur le Cure 
and though, perhaps, I was never the ardent Catholic I had 

49 


50 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


once been, I found a vegetative happiness in prayer and fol- 
lowed minutely all the rites of the Church. At college, I 
was no less conscientious. I worked till I stood first in Latin 
and in Greek, and I won a prize for my thesis on French 
literature. My last year of tuition finished in a fanfare of 
trumpets. 

I think this time was perhaps the happiest of my life. 
Later I was to know the hectic fever of excitement, of noto- 
riety, of gratified appetites, all the whirlpool of emotional 
experience, hut never a period of such sweet dreams, such 
inspired wakings, such studious, fruitful hours. Was it my 
little fiancee, I wonder, who gave such a pleasant tenor to 
my life ? I did not think so then. 

That year I finished my novel. My characters had grown 
dear to me and it pained me to roll them up in my manu- 
script and commune with them no more. 

The day I wrote the last word of my story, it was a tor- 
rid, summer day, I remember, I told Bernardette that noth- 
ing stood between me and fame. We were walking in her 
garden, her parents, as always, following at a discreet dis- 
tance. Bernardette had taken my arm, her delicate fingers 
rested on my sleeve. The engagement ring I had given her 
gleamed against the cloth of my coat. Sometimes I dis- 
cussed my work with her, not that I thought highly of her 
intellect, indeed, her mind, like that of every well brought up 
French girl, seemed cast in a mould. I thought her inca- 
pable of mental initiative or independent thought. No, it 
was to her heart’s understanding I appealed, just as Moliere 
did, no doubt, when he read his plays to his cook. 

From this it will be seen I did not idealise my little 
fiancee. I was not turbulently in love. Nevertheless I rode 
out three times a week to see this child ; my mother had hired 
me a horse, and it was my ride I enjoyed rather than my 
visit. 

I had outgrown this little girl, I told myself. To be 
sure at moments I still experienced, when with her, ardent 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


51 


almost cruel impulses, but usually she left me indifferent. 
She impersonated to me the dullness of the provinces, and 
my thoughts had already turned towards Paris where many 
of my school-mates had preceded me, where for the last year 
Ernest Bonnet was studying medicine in the intervals of dis- 
sipation, for he w T as going the pace, or so his letters proudly 
assured me. 

I took to dreaming of the Latin quarter, I imagined my- 
self elbow to elbow with the future genius of France. Often 
I forgot to answer Bernardette when she talked of what had 
once been our mutual life. 

One night I mustered my courage, and as I was lighting 
my mother’s candle I told her I had a wish very dear to my 
heart. I wanted to go to Paris to interview publishers with 
a view to bringing out my book. It was the fashion then for 
young authors to seek the patronage of literary celebrities. 
What could I do, mouldering in the provinces, while the capi- 
tal was calling me ? 

My mother looked at me sombrely, the candle-light accen- 
tuated the lines between her brows. “What writer do you 
know in Paris ?” she asked. She said the word Paris ironi- 
cally as a woman speaks the name of a rival. 

“There is Monsieur Jacques Colbert, the novelist,” I 
answered. “Monsieur Godot would give me a letter to him. 
Godot was once Colbert’s secretary.” 

“Monsieur Colbert is a socialist, an anarchist perhaps. 
Would you go to a man of this kind ?” 

“How do you mean a man of this kind ? Colbert, as well 
as a novelist, is a publisher. I want him to look at my work.” 

“His books treat of adultery and all manner of horrors, I 
would not have them in my house, they should go into the 
fire and the tongs should put them there.” 

Despair made me desperate. “But, mother, how shall I 
ever get ahead if you will insist on holding me back like this, 
you are ruining my chances.” 

“Euining your chances ?” My mother had laid her can- 


52 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


die on the table, and was apparently absorbed in fastening 
her keys more securely to her chatelaine. “Ruining your 
chances,” she reiterated in her temperate, guarded voice. “It 
seems strange to hear you say that, you were a puny child, 
if you have any strength, either physical or moral, it is I 
gave it you. So Tours is too small a field for you now al- 
though — I won’t say your mother, but your fiancee lives 
here.” 

“Mon Dieu, Bernardette is all very well in her way — I 
have nothing to say against her, but I cannot in self-respect, 
I cannot settle down here and live on her money without at 
least trying to make myself some sort of a position.” 

“Well, well,” said my mother, feeling the door-knob of 
the china cupboard to assure herself it was locked. “Heaven 
forbid, I should do what my son accuses me of doing, that is 
ruin his chances. I will think over what you have said. Good- 
night, Armand,” and she turned on me an austere back, 
strangled in a fichu, and left me vaguely dissatisfied with my- 
self. 


CHAPTER X 


“Through the vehemence of his spirit he was set in Babylon.” 

Bel and the Dragon . 

Paris ! This was Paris, this vast network of sparks, this 
phantasmagoria, this limitless plain of will-o’-the-wisps. 
Here in the night crouched the city of my dreams and her 
lights signalled to me. The train passed over a suspension 
bridge and beneath I saw threading left and right the streets 
like arteries of fire. Here and there an open door, an un- 
shuttered window glowed like a demoniacal pit. My heart 
beat high as if I had heard the trumpet of life, the bugle- 
call of adventure. 

Shuddering, the train drew up along the platform of the 
Gare du Xord. I seized my satchel and the basket of pro- 
visions with which my mother had saddled me. I slung this 
paraphernalia out into the station and sprang after it. I 
was in Paris, I was free, I was young, I had in my pocket a 
letter of introduction to the great publisher of the day, and 
in my satchel a manuscript in which there must be some good 
stuff as well as poor since I had written my heart out in it. 

As I stood there, smiling vaguely, turning my face right 
and left in the crowd, my hand in my pocket gripping my 
pocket-book, an individual with long hair, a floating tie and 
corduroy trousers of baggy proportions, advanced towards 
me with outstretched hand. It took me a moment to recog- 
nise in this picturesque brigand, Ernest. Ernest, very much 
the Student, the denizen of the Latin quarter. 

“Your train is late,” he called. “I have your room for 
you.” And he piloted me through the surge of people out 
into the street and into a fiacre, as though he were the show- 
man of this trampling multitude. 

53 


54 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


My trunk having been hurled beside the cocher, the man 
gave a hoarse cry and the vehicle got under way. I sat 
erect on the leopard-skin cushions. I hardly heard Ernest 
who was telling me of the room he had engaged for me in the 
house where he himself lodged in the Rue de l’Universite. I 
was looking down the vista of the street, past door after door 
where adventure seemed to lurk in the shadow of the porti- 
cos. As we drove into the old and tortuous Paris, I thought 
of the witch of whom Eugene Sue writes, the evil, crooked 
woman who spun and whined on the threshold of her den. I 
saw the lamps where through revolutionary July human 
heads had rotted, and suddenly the Seine, smelling cold, 
spread left and right of me, glaucous, opaque, coloured like 
an opal, the stone of mischance. So it was at night in all her 
criminal beauty that I first saw this city where I was to love 
acutely, to go through the gamut of life. 

That night I could not sleep, the surge of Paris tingled 
in my blood ; into the small hours I stood by my window. I 
marked how the street lamps flickered out, while a dank, 
acrid smell, an odour of poverty, arose from the pavement. 

I thought of the future, of my home, and — not without a 
certain nostalgia, — of my mother and of Bernardette. I re- 
called the visits of our courtship, my decorous walks with 
Bernardette, the feel of her little warm hand. I do not know 
how to account for it, hut since I had left Tours, the young 
girl haunted my memory. If, during our engagement I ever 
loved her, it was now. For the next few days, I kept think- 
ing of her and it was strange for my new life, or at least the 
milieu where I now lived, was as riotous, as turbulent as a 
carnival. 

Perhaps I was a little home-sick at first. I missed never 
hearing the church hells, there are no chimes in Paris while 
Tours is always humming with the message of its spires. 

Through the week that followed, I reproached myself for 
having been too casual when I had bid Bernardette good-bye. 
I was obsessed by her expression, by the wide eyes, the quiv- 


A WOMAN’S MAN 55 

©ring underlip with which she had heard the news of my im- 
pending departure. 

In getting away from Tours, I had not met with as much 
difficulty as I had feared. To my surprise, Monsieur Anselme 
had been in favour of my visit to Paris. “Let your son, 
Madame, work out his own salvation,” he had said, “let him 
be off to Paris, if he goes to the devil, I would rather he went 
before he marries my daughter than after.” And my mother, 
enumerating the temptations of the capital, had finally 
packed my trunk. 

The day after my arrival in Paris, I wrote to Monsieur 
Colbert, the novelist and publisher, enclosing the letter of 
introduction Monsieur Godot had given me. The next morn- 
ing brought me an answer. Monsieur Colbert assured me in 
a minute, literary hand that my work would receive prompt 
and careful attention. He added he would be glad to meet 
any friend of Monsieur Godot’s and asked if I cared to call 
and bring my manuscript in person on the morrow at ten 
a.m. By the next post, I wrote to the effect that I would 
give myself the pleasure of waiting on Monsieur Colbert on 
the day and at the hour named. 

That same evening in the brasserie where Ernest and I 
shared our meals with some twenty other young fellows, all 
students of science or of art, I could not refrain from prating 
of the interest Colbert had professed for me and of my pro- 
spective visit to him. My tone challenged the attention of 
the entire room. At moments I was brazen as only the shy 
dare to be. My announcement made something of a stir 
among the literary aspirants. They, like all the rest of the 
students, had till now ignored me, talked across me, looked 
through me, forced me to feel an interloper in Bohemia. I 
had sat amongst these roysterers who drank exuberantly, 
tossed their manes of hair and kissed the women they brought 
with them to table. I sat, I say, among these aesthetic 
apaches, my elbows glued to my sides, my eyes cast down, my 
hair sleeked puritanically over my temples, and I make no 


56 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


doubt I looked sadly incongruous, sadly out of place, a very 
widow’s darling from the provinces. 

They tell me that the real spirit of the Quartier Latin 
exists no longer, that Montmartre is only a clap-trap business 
now got up for the tourists. I shall not describe the Bohemia 
of my day except to say that I never met the grisette as Henri 
Miirger or as Hu Maurier have represented her. No Trilby, 
no trim soubrette such as the prints show, a witch with a pert 
foot, a provocative eye and a big band-box, ever crossed my 
way on the pavement north of the Seine. If she had, I 
might never have written my story. 

On coming to Paris, I was strung tense for love, for senti- 
mentality even, for poetry, who knows ? I needed a woman on 
whom to centre my highest and my lowest thoughts. At meal 
times, I remember, I would covertly look in the faces of the 
women near me. Under my eyelids, I watched them as they 
threw back their heads to drink, their throats showing white 
with powder, but there was nothing in these flaccid bodies, 
in these eyes, to ignite the spark. I could not find a face to 
please me and my thoughts fell back on Bernardette. I 
idealised her, I made myself dream of her, absent from her, 
I almost grew to love her — no, love is not the word exactly — 
rather, Bernardette served me as a figure-head, a human peg 
as it were on which I hung the sensuous cravings induced by 
my new exhilarating mode of life. There was waste energy 
in me, in my senses, in my heart. It was to find an outlet 
soon. The greatest of human adventures was coming closer 
at each hour. 

But to go back to the night when at supper in the bras- 
serie, I held forth on my prospects. “You had best get Ma- 
dame Colbert to interest herself in you,” a snickering youth 
m my left advised. 

“Why?” I asked innocently. 

“Why, because you would be made then.” 

“Has she such influence with her husband ?” 


A WOMAN’S MAN 57 

“Her husband, bah! be is a tame bonhomme is Jacques 
Colbert — Madame Colbert is the firm.” 

On bearing the name of this woman, one of the Parisian 
celebrities of the day, several young men craned forward. 
Between their empty glasses piled high like crystal minarets, 
their faces looked out blurred in a miasma of tobacco smoke. 

“Madame Colbert makes a specialty of young talent, she 
has the maternal instinct acutely developed,” and the cruel 
laugh of youth went round the table. 

“God, but that woman has put a lot into her life, she’s all 
used up,” a young Bacchus chimed in, uncorking a bottle. “I 
saw her two nights ago at Vefours, eyes like pits and her 
mouth sagging down, all full of morphia, I suppose; I hear 
that’s her latest, or some other drug. By the way, how old is 
she, I wonder?” 

“Oh, she’s not over thirty,” leniently, from some one. 

“Thirty ? Pshaw ! she’ll never see thirty-five again, why 
it was ten years ago — well, eight at least, that she had her 
affair with that black prince — you know, the Rajah.” 

“She’s not a day more than twenty-eight,” put in another 
young toper, and as his companions scoffed, “believe me 
what’s done for her is the pace. A woman can’t have a 
smattering of every vice and not show it.” 

“Still, in her way, she has 'panache, she is a type — a glo- 
rious creature even now,” announced a student of a more 
chivalrous turn of mind. “I saw her riding in the Concours 
Hippique in a habit that needed courage and a figure to wear. 
I wish she would pose for me, that’s all.” 

“Oh, no one denies the courage and the figure,” the ring- 
leader riposted, “if she hadn’t had both, she’d be dancing in 
the Cafe des Anglais still.” 

“Is that where she came from?” I asked agog. 

“Yes,” acquiesced one student. “No,” said another. 
“Certainly not,” assured a third, “she is a Russian, her father 
was an exiled noble,” but a fourth derided this statement. 
“She is the daughter of a Polish riding-master,” he said. 


58 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


The young men had drawn closer round the table. 

“Who is with her now?” asked Ernest. “Who is her 
friend?” By friend I understood that he meant lover. In 
answer, a student mentioned a name, hut another said, “No, 
that’s a thing of the past,” and the discussion became gen- 
eral. 

Uncomfortably I listened. You must remember I had 
been brought up in the provinces and trained in at least a 
superficial respect for women. It shocked me to hear these 
raw cynics discuss the morals and proportions of a lady for 
whom they kept, I made no doubt, their most obsequious how. 

“She’s another Sappho,” said Ernest. 

“She drinks ether,” said his neighbour. 

“Quelle blague,” cried some one beyond, “she never 
touches drugs nor drink either — no, here’s the cause,” and he 
tapped his forehead with the handle of his knife. “Here is 
where all the trouble is with Marie-Therese.” 

So it was that I first knew her name. The name that was 
to sway my life meant nothing to me then — : just two words 
heard inadvertently in an eating-house. I have thought 
sometimes since then that the day of our death is in the cal- 
endar, January, February, March, who knows? In the 
course of the year, we pass over it lightly and without pre- 
monition. 


CHAPTER XI 


“The first wrote, wine is the strongest. 

“The second wrote, the King is the strongest. 

“The third wrote, women are the strongest.” 

Esdras 1. 

It was, I recall, a mild morning in early October when I 
set out on that memorable day to walk to Monsieur Col- 
bert’s bouse. He bad asked me to call on bim, not at the 
publishing office but at bis residence in tbe Parc Monceau. 
I bad risen early and given my personal appearance some 
thought. Wishing to create tbe impression of a thinker, a 
romanticist, a young genius in short, I bad discarded my 
starched collar, assumed a floating tie and ruffled my ( 
hair. You must remember I am writing of tbe days of 1880, 
Lamartine, Alfred de Musset were still popular with us in 
France. Tbe romantic literati, in opposition to tbe realists, 
assumed a picturesque, not to say a frowsy appearance and 
I naively imagined no man could pass for a poet in a stiff- 
bosomed shirt. 

As I came into tbe vicinity of tbe Parc Monceau, as I 
saw tbe white fagades of tbe recently built bouses, my heart 
began to tighten, tbe dread I bad known as a child, tbe dread 
of adventure, the dread of life reassailed me. At tbe mo- 
ment I wanted to turn tail and with my manuscript under 
my arm, scurry home to Tours. 

I remember hoping I should not meet Madame Colbert. 
I bad an inordinate fear of notoriously fascinating women ; 
vanity, I think, was the root of this emotion. In France all 
our famous men are lady-killers and I shrank from being 
put to tbe test. Shrank from meeting a cosmopolitan woman, 

59 


60 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


dreaded the first glance of a world-wise siren, feared her 
mental summing-up as I might an examination or trial. 

Monsieur Colbert’s address was 15, Parc Monceau. His 
was a vast mansion of deathly white stone. In spite of the 
myriad windows aligned in rows, the residence had a non- 
committal, secretive look, it affected me unpleasantly. I 
might have hung about indefinitely trying to pluck up cour- 
age to ring the hell, had not a valet appeared on the steps 
and by the fixity of his stare forced me to explain why I 
was loitering at the door. 

“Monsieur Colbert will see you,” said the man in a for- 
eign accent and lounged into the house before me; he pro- 
ceded me up the stairs humming under his breath. 

I can give no idea of the awe with which I followed him. 
I had stepped into the temple of literature, I was about to he 
ushered into the presence of a master mind, the man whose 
work had thrilled me with the melancholy of the ideal, stirred 
me with a vague tenderness for humanity, would perhaps 
take me by the hand. I should he face to face with Jacques 
Colbert, the philosopher, the friend of Prudhon, the so- 
cialist. 

I confess it struck me as odd that a socialist should live 
in such an extravagant style, in such a luxuriously appointed 
house. Beneath my feet the carpet gave way like moss, under 
my hand the banister felt cold with the chill of marble. Por- 
phyry urns graced the landing, luxuriant palms, exotic foli- 
age, such as I had never seen, flourished in the alcoves. The 
atmosphere was close, heavy. As I mounted the stairs, I 
gradually grew soothed, light-headed almost. I have experi- 
enced the same sensation on entering a hot-house. Here and 
there, placed at random with no view to the lighting, hung 
paintings. Portraits of bare-bosomed women whose careless 
satin draperies shone in the semi-dusk, I passed a cloud of 
pink fleshy Cupids and picture after picture of still-life, por- 
trayals of game, nut-husks, half empty glasses of hock or 
claret, food and wine, wine and food accompanied me up the 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


61 


stairs in a material phantasmagoria. Could it be that the 
ascetic writer, the noble suffering spirit whom I had grown 
to know through his books, lived here among the flash of gilt 
frames and rococo decorations? 

I was more astonished when the valet, having thrown 
open a door and called a garbled version of my name (the fel- 
low was a foreigner to judge from his accent) lounged away 
and left me to the uninterrupted view of a regal study, rich 
with fur rugs, tapestries and Morocco fittings. Nowhere a 
sign of a desk* no literary disturbance, none of the blemishes 
work leaves in its track. 

With his back to the light, a tall man advanced towards 
me. It was Jacques Colbert, I made no doubt. “Monsieur 
Armand de Vaucourt ?” he asked when close to me. 

I came to a standstill, dumbfounded, for the socialistic 
writer proved to be a man of fashion. His frock-coat, his 
creased trousers, his monocle, were all after the English style. 
Anglomania was then rife with us in Erance. 

“You are welcome, Monsieur,” and the publisher in- 
clined a cone-shaped head, glossy with brilliantine, and in- 
stantly I was ashamed of my wild neck-gear and tangled 
hair. 

As I stood gaping, “You have brought your manuscript 
with you, I see,” observed the modish individual, seating him- 
self and motioning me to a chair by his side. I sat down 
balancing the folio and my hat on my knees. I murmured 
somo words of thanks expressing my appreciation of the in- 
terview accorded me. 

“Oh, not at all,” protested Monsieur Colbert waving an 
exquisite white hand. “Of course I am a little pressed for 
time, but it is always a pleasure . . .” He broke off and 
I saw his eye swivel uneasily towards the centre table where 
were ranged a row of unopened letters. 

In the pause, the tick of the ormolu clock seemed to warn 
me to hurry, to make a good impression quickly. Half- 
heartedly I started to talk of my work, every now and then 


62 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


Monsieur Colbert would interrupt me with a mechanical 
ejaculation or a stereotyped question. What a mysterious 
thing is talent ! Here was a man whose writings will live, I 
believe. A profound and humane thinker to judge from his 
books. Yet to meet Colbert was to meet a well-groomed 
nonentity, a shell of a man. He spoke in platitudes and 
his appearance was as commonplace as his conversation. The 
only touch of character in this handsome face, with its neat 
features and bright meridional colouring, were the streaks 
of grey starring the temples. Temples too narrow, one would 
think, for the travail of imagination. 

“My wife,” he said as I was drivelling on, for he made 
me nervous, I felt that in spite of his courtesy, he was tense 
to be rid of me, an unexpected stress of business, or so he told 
me, had borne down on him this morning — “my wife some- 
times looks through the manuscripts sent me, I take her opin- 
ion before that of any reader. I have already asked her to 
glance through yours.” 

I thanked him and rose feeling that the interview was at 
an end. I laid my manuscript on the centre table and just 
as I was turning to go, the door opened, I heard a rush of 
skirts and a woman came rapidly into the room. 

Instead of the voluminous furbelows of the time, she 
wore a riding-habit, I was conscious of her extreme height. 
She advanced undulating like a viper. “Jacques, that brute 
of an Hirondelle ran away with me in the Bois, I broke my 
riding crop on him,” she added, looking ruefully at a split 
bamboo cane in her hand. 

“There, I always told you the horse was dangerous, why 
will you be so reckless?” and the publisher rose and fussily 
introduced me to his wife. 

She turned her head rapidly over her shoulder to face me. 
A dark veil blurred her features, but I was aware of the 
quick probing glance with which she summed me up. My 
eyes fell before hers and I bowed. I murmured some com- 
monplace; she answered it. Her voice was low, level like 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


63 


that of a young man, and stretching out the hand nearest me, 
her left hand it was, she gave my fingers an energetic pres- 
sure. In the same breath she turned, strode to the window 
and stood there looking out and slapping her knee with her 
whip. 

“We can’t have too many young authors,” the publisher 
said vapidly, ushering me towards the door. “Can we, Marie- 
Therese?” he added, appealing to his wife. “No, no,” she 
called over her shoulder indifferently, still looking out of win- 
dow. I realised from the quality of her voice that she did 
not know to what he was referring. 

Just as on the threshold I was bowing myself out, she 
swept round. “Hirondelle is lame, I’ve seen it from here, 
just now, as Bastien was leading him to the stable” — she 
interrupted herself, noticing me hesitating awkwardly in the 
doorway. 

“I am looking forward to reading your book, Monsieur de 
IVaucourt. After I have finished it, I’ll drop you a line and 
talk it over with you.” She was conscious of having ap- 
peared preoccupied and was now making amends. 

Under her veil, her features seemed to me to take a more 
distinct form, shaping themselves in a smile of penetrating 
sweetness. 

I murmured my thanks and went down the broad, easy 
stairs thinking of her . . . she might have been attractive, 
I decided, had she not been so blonde. It was brunettes I 
admired and somehow I imagined that no fair woman could 
ever appeal to me. 


CHAPTER XII 


“This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, 
devilish.” 


Epistle of J ames. 


Fob the next two weeks I watched the post feverishly as 
might a lover. What would this woman write of my book ? 
Would she accept it for her husband’s firm? I thought of 
her personality, exotic, decadent, yet brutal, and I could 
not seem to see her relishing my simple story. I wished my 
work had gone into the hands of the reader rather than into 
hers. She was a difficult, moody creature, I determined. I 
trembled to think that my dear novel, my literary future, 
perhaps, hung on this mondaine’s judgment. 

I tried to forget my impatience. I spurred my brain on 
to work. I locked myself in my room and studied the ceil- 
ing, hut the plaster and the cornice afforded no inspiration. 
I thought of Bernardette hut I could no longer visualise her. 
The memory of her face was beginning to pass from my mind, 
to fade like an exposed film and he lost. 

One evening towards dusk, as I was moodily reading, the 
concierge came into my room with a letter. I saw “Colbert, 
publisher” printed across the flap of the envelope, and tore 
it open. The sheet of paper inside was of another colour 
and another make. A monogram blazed in the corner and 
before I had deciphered the writing, I was conscious of some 
heavy scent emanating from the page. Madame Colbert 
wrote in a straggling, grappling hand she would be at home 
on the morrow at five. She would be glad to see me, she 
assured, and would expect me. I need send no answer, only 
come if I could. She signed herself in a blot through which 
I dimly traced her name Marie-Therese. The letter looked 

64 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


65 


as though it had been composed in a frenzy, so illegible was 
the writing. I noticed she had spelt my surname wrong. I 
took it for an ill-omen. My book had not impressed her since 
she forgot the author’s name. I felt annoyed that my work 
should be at the mercy of a woman who used her pen as a 
scavenger might. I little knew that later this hand would 
trace words potent enough to take me from hell to heaven, 
from heaven to hell. 

On the morrow when I set out for my interview, I was, 
as always before any event, racked with anxiety and diffi- 
dence, if anything I felt more nervous than on my first visit 
to the publisher. I was conscious of my provincial clothes, 
of my youth and ready blushes. I wanted to pass for an 
unscrupulous man of the world, and had not even grown a 
moustache. My ambition was inordinate, my moral courage 
nil. I argued with myself. I said, “Why am I afraid of this 
woman with powder on her face ?” My reason said, “Why 
indeed? she is a human being just as you are.” But my 
heart set up the devil’s tattoo. If ever there was a being 
sapped by senseless emotion and unfitted to cope with the 
world it was I. I am told the artistic temperament is ever 
thus on the rack. I cannot believe it. I know many artists 
who have never suffered from this demoralising panic, from 
this dread of the personality of others, from this distrust of 
the possibilities of life. 

On this visit to the publisher’s, I was strung so tense that 
when I rang the door-bell I started. Its sharp, imperious 
report hurt me. The same foreign valet opened the door. 
“Madame will see you in the boudoir.” 

, The room into which he ushered me surprised me by its 
cramped proportions, by its disorder. It smelt of stale flow- 
ers and was close to suffocation. The windows of stained 
glass were hermetically sealed. Pallid figures in archaic 
scenes interposed their white floral-hung limbs between me 
and the sunlight. A frieze of the same character decorated 
the room. Close to the ceiling ramped figure after figure 


66 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


through a spinach-green field. Woman after woman lan- 
guished and disported, every now and then followed by a 
young man. At so much nudity I was a little abashed think- 
ing of our austere salon at home. 

“Madame will he here instantly,” said the valet, and he 
went out carelessly hurtling the door. I approached a table, 
snowed under with books, “The Modern Aphrodite,” I read 
and other titles of the same kind. My poor little story with 
its grief, simple as the grief of an orphan, what chance had 
it in this orchidaceous atmosphere? 

As I was wondering whether my hostess should find me 
sitting or standing, grasping my hat or not, I heard the rush 
of skirts and she came towards me holding out her hands that 
showed paler than the white dress she wore. 

“I have a good half hour,” she said abruptly, “and I 
shall need it, I have a great deal to tell you.” I kissed her 
hand, feeling it was about to deal my fate out to me. With 
a jerk of her head, she motioned me to sit down, drew out a 
drawer of the table and rummaged through it. 

I had time to note her costume. It was a deshabille such 
as I had seen worn on the stage at Tours, the seductive pei- 
gnoir assumed by actresses in temperamental scenes. 

“Here,” said she, throwing my manuscript so carelessly 
on to the table as to make me wince. My poor book in whose 
pages my heart had throbbed! She drew a chair to the 
table, and staring at the ceiling began to talk. Now and then 
she struck the pages of my manuscript with the back of her 
hand. There was something to be said for my work, she 
didn’t deny it. It showed the essential — imagination, but it 
was crude, raw, and worse still, stilted at times, it hadn’t 
the blood of reality, the author hadn’t yet lived — there was 
the trouble. I listened to her, growing cold and sick. All 
the horror of artistic disappointment broke over me in a per- 
spiration. 

“See this passage,” said she, “and this, and this. Women 
don’t talk like that. Look at this page, come closer — here — 


a woman’s man 


67 


look.” As I drew my chair up to the table, in my heart I 
knew I had never disliked a being as I did this woman with 
her enterprising hands, her eyes shallow as flawed emeralds 
and her restless mouth where glinted, cruelly white, uneven 
teeth pointed as a dog’s. She figuratively tore my hook in 
pieces and I could say nothing in self- justification. 

“You want to know love before you write about it,” was 
her final summing up. Nothing she could haye said could 
have hurt me more. 

“How old are you ?” she asked, looking at me directly for 
the first time. 

“I am twenty,” I answered. 

Something in my face seemed to arrest her attention, 
and for an instant she continued to look at me fixedly. 

“Ah,” said she, abstraction in her voice, “at twenty, you 
know, of course, something of life. But,” she added after 
a pause as though dismissing some thought, “you will have 
to know more before a Parisian will read you.” And she 
went on to describe the Parisian readers as she understood 
them, as a public light and cynical, interested only in sexual 
questions. My hook, she declared, breathing as it did the 
dull peace of the provinces, would never sell. I realized 
that “Colbert, publishers” turned me down. Nothing was 
left me to do hut to pick up my manuscript and go. 

As I hesitated abashed by the formality of leave-taking, 
“What do you take before you work?” Madame Colbert 
asked. 

“Take?” I echoed. 

“Yes, anything to drink, any kind of stimulant ?” 

“Why, no, — well, at least, nothing but coffee, yes, and 
tea sometimes.” 

“When do you work ?” 

She still stared at me insistently under her straight 
brows, but gradually my dread of her was beginning to wear 
off. I think this was due to the quality of her voice. It 


68 


A WOMAN’S man 


was so direct, so level, with none of the trills and artificial 
lightness peculiar to French women’s diction. 

“For the last year,” I told her, “I have worked from nine 
to twelve at night. I have never let a day go by without 
doing some hit of my book.” 

“That is had.” 

“Why, Madame?” 

“Because you must have worked when you didn’t want 

to.” 

“Why, yes — otherwise I should have got nothing done.” 

“Nothing that is not written spontaneously is good — at 
least that is what our big authors tell me. You can’t sit down 
in cold blood and challenge the Muse.” 

“But if one must write steadily to earn one’s living, one 
cannot wait about at the beck and call of inspiration.” 

, “Inspiration is not a normal state. If you are to be in- 
spired at given hours, you have got to depend on some stimu- 
lant to buoy you up.” 

“What stimulant, Madame?” 

“Well, absinthe or cocaine or morphia — whatever you 
please, so long as it excites your imagination.” 

What she said struck me forcibly. If my work was with- 
out marrow, it was due no doubt to the fact that it had grown 
through a mental concentration on my part and had not been 
dashed off in a fine, senseless frenzy. Hope began to shine 
for me again. It was wonderful to think that stored away in 
a chemist’s or a bar, were the bottled genii that would inspire 
my future stupendous book. 

“Let us see what you do next,” said the publisher’s wife, 
revolving towards me suddenly and out-facing me with her 
white visage framed in tawny hair. “Burn all that and be- 
gin again.” 

I thanked her and rose. As I lifted my manuscript from 
the centre table, it was heavy in my hands like the body of 
a dead child. 

I heard the door open behind me. “Madame la Prin- 


A WOMAN’S MAN 69S 

cess© Koumistorf, Monsieur le Comte de Kerlavoz,” the valet 
announced. 

“Don’t go yet,” said Madame Colhert to me in a friendly, 
secretive whisper, and swept forward to greet the newcom- 
ers. 

The Princess Koumistorf, divorcee, poet, explorer with 
whose name I was familiar — I had read her hooks, all the 
vogue then, and admired them, — was a vicious looking crea- 
ture wearing a monocle and a long sporting-coat. Her daz- 
zling stock and irreproachable cuffs made her seem quite the 
gentleman. 

The women met effusively and when Madame Colhert 
turning introduced me to the Koumistorf, it seemed incon- 
gruous to kiss the hand the Princess held out to me in a dog- 
skin glove several sizes too large. 

“Monsieur de Kerlavoz, Monsieur Armand de Vau- 
court,” said Madame Colhert. I noticed as she spoke the 
name of the young officer, her voice took on a lingering ca- 
dence. I realised the charm of her utterance, I can hear it 
now, muffled, always slightly hoarse, like the low notes of 
the cello. 

The new arrival and I exchanged a curt bow. I felt an 
instant aversion for this man, an antipathy of temperament. 
He was the finer animal, I knew, the man of action, while I 
was the dreamer. I envied him his virile personality, his 
manner with women. I noted his aquiline features, his 
fierce, dark eyes set close together. He had the grace of 
strength, its arrogant ease. He put his sword across his 
knees and sat down deliberately stretching out his long mus- 
cular legs. He wore the red and black uniform of the artil- 
lery-man. 

At first the women talked together. Kerlavoz, after a 
few commonplaces addressed to me, lapsed into silence. He 
took to worrying his moustache, while under tense brows he 
studied Madame Colbert, who, half turned away from him, 
lounged on a divan. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


TO 

“Yes,” the Princess was saying with a rich Roumanian 
accent, “there is no better advertisement for a beginner than 
to have his hooks censored on the score of immorality.” She 
plunged her hand into her side-pocket and drew out a cigar- 
ette-case. “Is not that the truth, eh, Marie-Therese V 9 

“It is advisable to have a name first,” Marie-Therese re- 
joined, turning over on her side. This brought her face to 
face with Kerlavoz. Her eyelids were cast down, they were 
smooth like white petals. She raised them gradually and 
looked at the young officer. The appeal, the imperiousness 
of sex veiled her eyes. Under the insistent answer of his 
glance, her eyebrows writhed significantly. Her lips trem- 
bled as though she were whispering something and lithely un- 
coiling from her recumbent position, she crouched on the side 
of the divan, her chin resting in her hand, her eyes cast down 
again under bland lids. This posture showed to advantage 
her mass of hair which was of a sultry yellow like the mane 
of a lion. 

j This passionate pantomime impressed me strangely; it 
stirred in me a sense of anticipation. I felt the under-tow 
of sensuality that goes on in the world, the rush and throb 
of secret pleasure. Paris I knew was alive with women such 
as Marie-Therese, whose very skirts rustled with a voluptu- 
ous intelligence. I should come and go among them, kissing 
passive hands, till she who was to make my life, would signal 
me out with a deep, compelling look such as I had just seen. 
Again I glanced at Marie-Therese. Against the drapery of 
the divan, I noted her pallor, the enigma of her downcast 
eyelids. 

With every instant now, the room grew darker, banking 
up with shadow. The hush of dusk, the spell of the sacred, 
disquieting hour possessed us. Even the Princess was si- 
lenced. Lounging on her side, she smoked incessantly, des- 
perately as though for a wager. At intervals, with a twitch 
of her wrist, she jerked a cigarette stump towards the hearth. 
Generally she missed the grate, the spark fell to the floor 


A WOMANS MAN 71 

and burnt there like a glow-worm, scorching the carpet of 
the close, disordered room. 

Finally — “Yes,” she said, continuing her thoughts aloud, 
“the Pope has just put my friend’s hook on the Index — as 
you say in France — banned it. Shall I tell you why? Be- 
cause it’s the story of a cocotte who hadn’t the genteel man- 
ners of Dumas’s consumptive. Thank God, ‘Nana’ has been 
spared us. By the way, I hear it’s to be reprinted from ‘Le 
Voltaire.’ It’s to be brought out in book form in February. 
There’ll be as big a hue and cry as in ’77 after ‘L’ Assomoir 
appeared. Ah, well,” she added, flicking a cigarette ash off 
her cuff, “Zola is not the first honest author. Remember 
when Flaubert — why, it must be some twenty years ago — 
was prosecuted for his ‘Madame Bovary’ ? The world is an 
old leper that won’t look at it3 face in the glass — no wonder 
that it hates realism.” 

After forty years, I remember this speech as though I 
had heard it only yesterday. It was a summing up of the 
realistic creed — the new creed fast taking root in France. 
Maupassant, Zola, Edmond de Goncourt were at their zenith. 
Literary France was in a turmoil, torn by the realists and 
the romanticists, or rather by the Naturalists and the Par- 
nassians as they called themselves. The Colbert publishing 
firm was all for the new school. In Madame Colbert’s salon, 
every novel that breathed sentiment, fine feeling, was derided. 
Stories of alcoholic decay, studies of neurasthenia, perverse 
psychologies were all the vogue. 

When after my first interview with Madame Colbert, I 
kissed her hand in the dusk, left her to her friends and bowed 
myself away with my discarded manuscript, my summing up 
of the afternoon’s talk was, “What is poetic must inevitably 
be insincere.” I was sad, I felt I had lost some illusion, some 
hope. As I passed down the streets, the wind tingled through 
me to the forlorn echo of my feet. 

Since my visit to the publisher’s wife, the face of the 
world had changed for me. The artist sees life through the 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


ST2 

mirage of his talent. That afternoon, I had tasted of the 
tree of artistic good and evil, I had to readjust my views. 

Marie-Therese had suggested to me that my manuscript 
was blurred by the roseate cloud of romance. Well, it 
might be so, and if the business of literature was to show the 
grim angles of life, the dogging of heredity, the inevitable 
march of disease, I should surprise her yet, the didactic 
woman with her probing looks and her brutal hands that had 
crumpled and insulted my pages. How she had ridiculed this 
phrase, how she had laughed at that. What she had said 
was true, that was why it hurt me. I burnt with shame and 
ached all over. The woman had thought me a prig. She had 
asked me, I remember, with what I interpreted as a malicious 
smile, how I had come to write the story. And, by the way, 
I questioned myself, as I pressed forward, how had this 
goody-goody stuff taken form in my mind? Surely such 
piffle was alien to me . . . surely — ah, now I knew where all 
the trouble lay. It was my mother who had encouraged me 
to believe that this rubbish was good. 

My mother — as I thought of her, I was conscious of acute 
irritation. She it was who was responsible for this whining 
pair of lovers and their silly idyll. I had talked my original 
idea over with her and her enthusiasm had spurred me on 
and suggested to me more sickly sentiment. Just to think 
of the hours I had wasted, bent over my table. It was my 
mother I had to thank for the time I had lost, for the pre- 
cious minutes of my youth I had flung away. She it was who 
had insisted on my working regularly every day, willy-nilly. 
Did she think to visualise the phantoms of the brain, to 
draw from the heart a rush of words, to write, in short, one 
need merely lock oneself in a room and nibble a pencil ? Poor 
mother, what did she know of inspiration ! that like the wind 
“bloweth whence no man listeth.” 

This Marie-Therese Colbert was an artist at any rate. 
She was right, I must know the commotion of life, the delir- 
ium of love before I again put pencil to paper. It was a 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


73 


good idea that of hers — stimulants before work. Had not 
Yerlaine found his forces in absinthe, and Poe his in brandy, 
and Baudelaire his in hashish? Nothing that is not written 
spontaneously is good, she had said so. Her theory practi- 
cally abolished work. No more headaches of concentration, 
just an easy flow of words in the reverie induced by wine. I 
hurried on feeling I had found the key to artistic transports, 
to fame. 

About me sprang up the glitter of the luxurious city pre- 
paring to blazon out the night. As I crossed the Seine, and 
saw its spangled tide reflecting the gaiety of the shores, I felt 
as I never had before, that dissipation completes a man, that 
in a way vice is an education. 

When I reached my lodging I found I still carried my 
manuscript, poor limp expression of a dead self. 


CHAPTER XIII 


“Remove thy way from her and come not nigh the door of her 
house. 

Lest thou give thine honour unto others and thy years unto the 
cruel.” 

Proverbs . 

I did not instantly follow Madame Colbert’s advice. I 
did not immediately take to the bacchanalian course she had 
prescribed. I shrank before the effort of the will it requires 
to form new habits, new vices. In spite of the fashion in 
which I have frittered away my life, wine and loose com- 
pany have never really appealed to me. 

My first month in Paris I spent after my heart in desul- 
tory reading and visits to. the theatre. I wrote regularly to 
my mother and Bernardette, though their answers showed 
me a world with which I was out of touch. I had shed the 
past, could I care whether or no my mother had finished 
Monsieur le Cure’s altar cloth ? What did it matter whether 
old Yvonne had just put on the stove an infusion of tilleul 
for Monsieur Godot’s cold? I do not mean I was utterly 
without memory, but Paris had absorbed me. I was a very 
chameleon, a harp in the wind, a mirror meant to reflect 
every face and to keep the stamp of none. 

My little fiancee’s correspondence, however, surprised 
me. Though perfunctory, it breathed I know not what gen- 
tle, old-fashioned and becoming sentiment, and every now 
and then, in some phrase the heart spoke. These letters ap- 
pealed to me from a literary point of view and I kept them. 
I concluded indulgently that I had been hard on Bernardette 
when in the past I had put her down as — well — superficial. 
Perhaps, I decided, her voice had been responsible for this 

74 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


75 


impression. She spoke softly, lightly, with the twittering of 
a canary. Many French women have this childish utterance. 
It gives even to the most discerning remark a sort of gentle 
inanity, not unpleasing, if the voice is young. 

In Paris every morning as I woke, I felt ashamed of the 
passive hermit life I was leading, here in the whirl of the 
capital, in the very sanctum of sensation. I was free, hut 
I made no use of my freedom. I put off grappling with the 
world and crept guiltily to some museum or public monu- 
ment. I kept to myself and avoided Ernest and the discon- 
certing grisette with whom he had been living for the last 
six weeks. 

Vague longings towards a new form of self-expression 
were beginning to ferment in me. I felt the travail of an- 
other hook going on in my brain — a plot taking shape. 

As yet in Paris I had experienced none of the adven- 
tures I had promised myself. In Tours, I had been hungry 
for pleasure ; now that I could assuage my appetites they no 
longer tortured me. Somehow I felt that without exerting 
any initiative, the acme of living, the vital hour would come 
to me inevitably and soon. 

I was preoccupied by the Colbert menage. I thought of 
it as I walked alone in the Bois and in the public squares 
devastated by November. I pondered over the flashy house, 
over the flamboyant folk I had met there; the woman above 
all with her erotic reputation, her present blatant liaison with 
Kerlavoz, her vital handshakes and high pressure glances 
obsessed me. 

I looked forward from Friday to Friday. Friday was 
Madame Colbert’s reception day and I had taken her stand- 
ing invitation literally. This weekly visit was the event of 
my life. I apprehended this function in a way. To crush 
through a crowd of celebrities into the miasmic atmosphere 
of Madame Colbert’s boudoir, put me in a tremor of diffi- 
dence and gratified vanity. 

Marie-Therese received in an enigmatic gloom after the 


76 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


approved artistic style. On entering her salon, you were apt 
to trip over a tiger rug or knock your head against a censer. 
Whether she rose suddenly off the divan calling me by name, 
or merely extended towards me a languid finger, this woman 
never failed to disconcert me by her greeting. At times it 
was effusive enough to make me blush; at others, her smile 
vague, non-committal, gave me the impression that she no 
longer recognised me. At first these alternations of mood 
caused me anxiety. I would review the incidents of my 
last visit, trying to recall what tactless remark of mine had 
estranged her from me. Later, in moments of vanity, I con- 
cluded that MarierTherese blew thus hot and cold from co- 
quettish policy. It was evident, I thought, that she wanted 
to enlist me among the men she kept about her on tenter- 
hooks. I realise now looking hack that at this time I was 
nothing to her, that she was not plotting to appropriate me. 
She was neither the poseuse nor the schemer I supposed her 
to he. If she greeted me coldly, her head ached probably ; if 
she smiled on me bewilderingly, she was thinking of some 
one she loved then. 

She was a creature of a strong physical nature, strung 
tense by drugs, unbalanced by a wild, disordered life. Sim- 
ple as a goddess, unmoral as Aphrodite, she was above the 
wiles of a woman. Her unbridled temperament unsexed her. 
Brunehilde trapped in a ballroom, enervated by society, 
might have had the same untrammelled gestures, the same 
wide looks where at moments passed in a flash the regret of 
a more primitive life, a life aloof and proudly pure. In vast 
plains, on windy hills, I could picture this woman free, ex- 
alted, virginal; civilised, I felt her to he, a harmful thing, 
like some nefarious weed reeking poison from every pore. 


CHAPTER XIV 


“Keep thee from the evil woman, from the flattery of the tongue of 
a strange woman.” 


Proverbs . 


One afternoon, in March it was, on one of Madame Col- 
bert’s non-reception days I remember, I sent up my card 
asking to see her with a view to consulting her about a madri- 
gal I had just written, my first stroke of work since I had 
come to Paris. I hoped to find her alone. I wanted to read 
the poem to her and explain that it had been composed in 
the manner she had recommended after a stiff drink of ab- 
sinthe. Personally I did not think entirely well of the verse. 
It was lurid in a way though and I hoped it might appeal to 
her. 

I was disappointed on entering the boudoir to find an- 
other visitor, the Princess Roumistorf was lounging on the 
divan, her eternal cigarette in hand, smoke filtering through 
her nose. 

“Hullo,” she cried in the voice of an hostler, “come to 
consult the Muse ?” 

“Good afternoon, Princess,” I murmured, kissing the 
muscular hand this fearsome Amazon held out to me. “The 
valet told me that Madame Colbert was not well, but he 
rather thought she might see me so asked me to come up — • 
nothing serious I hope?” 

The Princess twinkled her little eyes at me ; her weather- 
beaten face was as genially withered as a jockey’s. “She 
has had similar attacks, the long and the short of it is that 
Kerlavoz has been ordered to the Verdun garrison. Marie- 
Therese has just heard the news; she has been ranting like 


78 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


an amoureuse dramatique in lier fifth act. She is furi- 
ous because he won’t give up the army to stay with her, 
won’t throw up his commission. She’ll be down soon, she 
has gone up to put some powder on her nose. Kerlavoz, 
there is a man can flatter himself he’s inspired a grande 
passion! Pshaw, why I beat the fellow neck and crop in last 
year’s hurdle race. What does she see in him more than in 
another, I ask you — what has she seen in all the others? 
Well, well, all women don’t feel as I do fortunately, or where 
would the world be ?'” 

“Ah, where indeed,” — I echoed, feeling I must say some- 
thing and conscious of having chosen an inadequate answer. 
I can give no idea of the sense of discomfort with which the 
Roumistorf affected me. She kept for me a peculiar leer, a 
twinkle of indulgent irony which put me in agonies of em- 
barrassment. Now, as she sprawled on the divan, I watched 
her out of the tail of my eye. With her little finger on which 
shone a massive seal ring, she kept flicking off the ash of her 
cigarette onto the flat breast of her glace shirt. “You’re as 
pretty as a girl,” she said to me suddenly in a matter-of-fact 
voice. 

“I hope not,” I answered laughing uncomfortably, and 
lifting my head I saw my reflection in the glass over the 
mantel opposite. 

It seems strange but I do not remember ever having 
really studied my face before. I do not mean that I had 
not looked at myself often enough. Shaving, I had seen this 
long, pale oval every morning, but now the character of my 
features, the meaning of my face impressed itself on me as 
never before. Was this a jaw to cope with the world ? Could 
these full-lidded eyes dominate men ? Surely the nose, long 
and drooping, bespoke the incompetent dreamer, the pessi- 
mist, while the brow, harmoniously low, sloped away under 
pretentiously disordered hair. Had my conscience itself 
taken form before me, I could not have been more disturbed. 

“Ah, so there you are,” ejaculated the Princess interpo 


3K WOMAN’S MAN ?9 

lating some one over my shoulder. “Going out V 9 she ques- 
tioned, screwing her monocle into her eye-socket. 

I turned; the publisher’s wife stood in the doorway 
swathed in furs, a boa wrapped about the lower part of her 
face. “Yes, will you come, Princess ?” asked Marie-Therese 
through the fur in a smothered, monotonous voice. 

“Not I if it’s to drive in the Bois. I don’t want to be 
seen in a procession, I haven’t a pretty enough face, and 
what’s more, as they file by, I can’t see, I’m too near-sighted, 
the faces that are pretty. But here’s a young fellow who 
might be induced to go along with you.” 

“Come, Monsieur de Vaucourt,” Marie-Therese enjoined, 
in a gloomy yet impulsive fashion, and as I hurried forward 
to greet her, she laid a cold hand in mine. “You won’t find 
me good company, de Vaucourt, I warn you.” Her fingers 
tightened nervously, she gave a vicious laugh and trailing 
her stole, she passed through the corridor, down the dark 
stairs out into the street. I noticed she swayed a little as 
she walked and kept her hand to her forehead as though she 
felt dizzy. 

In the hall, I stayed a moment to get my hat and coat 
When I came out into the street, Madame Colbert had al- 
ready taken her place in the coupe. The footman was holding 
wide the door for me, the entire equipage, fine roans and 
impassive coachman, were waiting at attention in the broad, 
wind-swept causeway. 

I found Madame Colbert reclining in the near corner of 
the carriage. To take my seat I had to move beyond her. 
She did not stir to make room for me. I could not help but 
brush against her knees as I edged past her. 

It was the first time I had been in close proximity to 
this woman. In this rolling box of a carriage, I felt that she 
and I were paired off from the rest of the world. As it hap- 
pened, I had never seen her in full daylight before. 

The sun was not becoming to this battered siren, or pos- 
sibly to-day she had not employed the arts with which she 


80 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


was wont to harmonise her face. Now under her rich furs, 
her skin showed sallow, swollen under the eyes. The lips 
looked chapped and livid, above all the will to be beautiful 
that can transfigure a woman, was lacking. She allowed her- 
self to rock with the motion of the carriage. Her head wob- 
bled to and fro with the unconsciousness, with the self-ab- 
jection of a sea-sick passenger. In the tell-tale sunlight, I 
found her so plain that I took heart, felt less diffident and 
inconsequently enough, grew more gallant in my manner. 

“Why, she’s thirty-five at least, she’s almost an old 
woman,” I said to myself. “I don’t care what she thinks of 
me,” and I turned eloquent. 

I pointed out to her the beauty of the vista opening be- 
fore us r the new green of the trees unfurling on either side. 
We were in the Bois by now, in the Avenue Longchamps, and 
all the elegance of the eighties was filing by. The men in 
high-crowned hats, moulded into their tight clothes, cara- 
coling on showy horses. The ladies deep in their landaus 
seemed trying to hide their pretty heads, their sloping shoul- 
ders, behind farcical little parasols, variegated like butter- 
flies. When will the graceful style of the overskirt, of soft 
ruffles, furbelows and scarves, come back again ? Never was 
there anything more charming, more inanely feminine, or is 
it that the prettiest fashion to a man, the fashion he never 
forgets, is the fashion of women when he was young ? 

Marie-Therese, and nothing could have instanced better 
her strange, unfeminine lack of coquetry, allowed herself 
to be driven up and down this brilliant parade without the 
flicker of an eyelid. Tying stunned in the corner of her 
carriage, as though some ambulance had dumped her there, 
she never acknowledged the sweep of hats, the flicker of 
parasols that all along the file greeted her carriage. 

I tried to rouse her out of coma by questioning her as 
to the Koumistorfs’ next expedition. On one of my visits to 
the publisher’s house, I had understood that in the spring, 
the Princess meant to explore Central Africa. You must 


A WOMAN’S MAN- 


81 


remember I am writing of the eighties when much of Africa 
was still dangerous ground. Would she take a large party — 
how soon would she set off on her travels ? I asked, but could 
get nothing conclusive from Marie-Therese’s answer that 
died away in sighs, moans and irritable jerks at her hat to 
straighten it. I decided she had been indulging in some 
drug, for so rumour accounted for her moods, and I lapsed 
into silence. 

Suddenly she startled me by rearing up on her elbow. 
“Avenue des Acacias,” she called to the coachman, “I want 
to get out of this crowd.” She fell back with a sort of shud- 
der and drew her stole about her mouth. 

We turned from the Avenue Longchamps to the left, 
down a road where from either side trees threw an over- 
lapping shadow. 

As the shade engulfed us, Madame Colbert moved rest- 
lessly. She uncoiled the boa from her neck, the tail of the 
fur tingling and warm from her throat, struck me across 
the face. The backward jerk I gave, made her turn. She 
opened her eyes full on me. “Ah,” said she as though just 
realising my presence, and gripping her stole in both hands, 
crunching it up close under her attenuated chin, she began 
to talk feverishly. How was my work progressing? I had 
written a poem ? Good, good, excellent, she was glad. 
Should I read it to her ? By all means. And she flung her- 
self back to listen, looking at me askance. All the while her 
feet kept moving under the fur rug and her ungloved hands 
worrying her necklace. The stones gave out fire, they seemed 
like sparks glowing at the root of her throat through the film 
of her collar. 

In a tremor, for I recognised in this woman my artistic 
judge, I took from my pocket my madrigal. The light, how- 
ever, was too dim to permit me to read, so knowing my poem 
by heart, I recited it instead. As I finished, I glanced at 
Marie-Therese, trying to spy out her expression, but in the 
dusk against the opalescent square of the open window, her 


82 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


face only showed as a dark oval. She did not speak in- 
stantly. Behind her through the window, there blew into 
us the sweet rotten odour of earth. We drove on deeper into 
the recesses of the Bois. 

“Do you like it ?” I asked finally trying to make my voice 
light and confident. 

“Yes,” she said, and laying her hand on my shoulder, 
with one of her familiar, almost masculine gestures, she 
praised me. 

I can give no idea of this moment. It was ineffably 
sweet to me in the semi-dark to hear the voice of a woman, 
the voice of the woman in whose judgment I believed, tell- 
ing me what I had done was good, what I should do must 
be better. 

Encouraged, I confided to Marie-Therese, the strange 
effect of the absinthe under whose stimulus I had composed 
these verses. At first my mind, I said, had felt on fire, teem- 
ing with thoughts, words, visions. My pen had hardly been 
able to keep pace with my brain. A period of inertia had 
followed, not sleep exactly and yet a kind of dream. On 
waking I had been oppressed with a sense of cold, a ner- 
vousness, a premonition of ill had hung over me through the 
rest of the day. On first re-reading the poem, I declared 
the metre had held me as might a stranger’s rhythm. The 
absinthe had worked like magic. I confided to Marie- 
Therese I was almost afraid of the stuff. I spoke with a 
shudder of the gradual swelling of the skull which is the 
stigma of the absinthe fiend. 

The publisher’s wife reassured me, holding me by the 
shoulders, smiling at me in the gloom. It would take a 
course of assiduous drinking, a regime of absinthe to de- 
generate into a victim of the opalescent drug. To judge 
from my poem, Marie-Therese assured me I had found in 
absinthe my elixir of inspiration. 

The woman seemed eager to undermine my life. Why ? 
What wanton impulse prompted her? I was but a pro- 


A WOMAN'S MAN- 


83 


vincial boy, a nonentity, poor game for her. Did she lay her 
scheme from the first, did she keep to a preconcerted plan? 
I think not. This creature was harmful instinctively, she 
merely did according to her kind just as the adder stings. 

She assumed now to question me about my literary yearn- 
ings, to ask me of my childhood, of my home, a gentle voice, 
harmonious inflections, murmurs of sympathy that seemed 
almost to caress me. She, who till now had always been 
so self-absorbed, so aloof from me, now bent towards me with 
soft, feminine cries of interest, surprise, pity. I forgot the 
long yellow face the sunlight had disclosed to me. This 
presence defined against the window, silhouetted in the ver- 
dant dusk, this feminine contour leaning towards me ready, 
pulsating for what I had to say, enchanted me entirely. 

Little by little, I told all my twenty years had stored 
in my heart. I really believed Marie-Therese wanted to 
hear in what manner my life had passed. I confided to her 
what others had never heard me speak. How could I know 
that she now bent towards me tremulous with sympathy 
only because she was heart-hurt by Kerlavoz, embittered with 
him for leaving her ? Her vanity craved a sop ; she made me 
serve the purpose. I was to her that some one a woman often 
seeks when she is forsaken by the man she loves. That 
unhappy some one whom she cajoles and charms just to 
prove to herself that though she has lost what is dearest 
to her, she still keeps a woman’s power. Here you have the 
secret of many a partnership in so-called love affairs. A 
woman takes a new lover for no better reason than because 
she is preoccupied by the old lover. 

I told Marie-Therese, I remember, of my studious years 
at home, of my mother, the rigorous, Spartan woman. I 
told of my first premonitions of life, of my cravings for 
fame, for self-expression, of the disordinate thoughts of 
adolescence. I told of Bernardette, too, and how I had en- 
gaged myself to her. In the dark, to this woman leaning 
towards me, rustling, scent-laden, I described my fiancee. I 


84 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


chose mj words, trying to convey the likeness of the charm- 
ing and delicate child. 

“Delightful! and you will be married in a year or so!” 
asked Madame Colbert in another key. It was a social tone 
she affected now, conventional and insincere, opposed to 
the intense minor murmurs with which she had encouraged 
my confidence. I felt I had blundered in bringing into the 
conversation mention of another woman. 

“Yes, I shall vegetate with Bernardette in Tours, I 
loathe the provinces, hut the thing has been arranged — well — 
since I can first remember.” I spoke in a voice I meant to 
be flippant and disparaging. My fatal adaptability, my 
desire to please, counselled this tone. 

“As a married man you should come back to Paris,” 
Marie-Therese suggested edging into the corner of the coupe, 
nestling away from me, drawing her skirts about her. 
“Nowadays a rising literary man must not have a provincial 
wife. You must make a Parisienne of Mademoiselle — what 
did you say her name was — Anselme ? Not the factory peo- 
ple surely ?” 

“Yes,” I admitted feeling I had it in me to be a Judas 
and a snob. 

“But, my dear boy, you are marrying millions, I con- 
gratulate you. I understand now.” 

“No, no,” I interposed hastily, “the Anselmes are not 
as rich as you have heard. They are very simple people 
really. Bernardette and I were engaged when we were 
hardly more than children,” 

“I see, Paul and Virginia.” Again her laugh made me 
wince. Here I was closeted with this brilliant, this tempera- 
mental mondaine. I had had the chance of impressing my 
personality on her, I could have talked psychology, art, love, 
I could have talked of her. Instead, I had droned out the 
history of my nursery days. I had shown myself a raw 
fiance taking his fling in the capital. I wanted to do away 
with this crude impression. I confessed to having been let 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


85 


into the engagement to satisfy my mother. I implied — oh, 
with every consideration for Bernardette he it understood — 
that my heart was not in this business. A provincial child, 
however pretty, however clinging her ways, could hardly 
fascinate a man of my experience and taste. 

After I had said this, I felt better for Madame Colbert 
instantly bent forward, quite close to me to question me 
about Bernardette. Bending always nearer, enveloping me 
in a giddy sense of intimacy, her face almost touching 
mine, I answered with a view to pleasing her and with no 
consideration for the truth. My instinct was unerring and 
Marie-Therese began to smile, to glow at me in the dusk. 

She said it was hard on me, very hard, for though of 
course from my description, she understood that the little 
girl must be very pleasing, very ingenuous, nevertheless 
Mademoiselle Anselme did not seem quite the wife for me. 

The flattery her phrase implied went to my head. In- 
coherently I blurted out something and kissed the hand 
she gave me. The gesture with which she laid her palm in 
mine was a sort of surrender, yet there was no coquetry 
about it. It was not provocative exactly, hut simple, a lit- 
tle stem as though she were entering into some compact 
with me. Her head held high, her face pure and impassive 
as that of a young Crusader. 

Could it be that this wonderful woman took an interest 
in me? Surely her treatment of me was something espe- 
cial. Assuredly no one before had had quite this hand- 
grip from her. Some affinity drew us together. She pressed 
my fingers vigorously, the very energy of her caress seemed 
to make it innocuous — hail-fellow-well-met. She murmured, 
“My dear . . . Arthur.” 

“My name is Armand,” I said coming down out of the 
clouds. 

“Oh yes, of course, Armand, to he sure, my dear Ar- 
mand.” 

But in thus misnaming me, Marie-Therese broke the 


86 A WOMAN’S MAN 

spell under which she had held me. She put an end to my 
heady rapture. 

During our drive hack to Paris, my conscience — per- 
haps I should say my sensibility — stirred, it hurt me. I 
had betrayed Bernardette. I had spoken lightly of her, 
implying that this gentle comrade was uncongenial to me, 
that the prospect of sharing my life with her was distaste- 
ful. I had found a sneer almost to tell of the simple, 
endearing ways of my little friend, and in doing so, I had 
not only offended against her memory, hut besmirched what 
had been most idealistic, best in my boyhood. I grew 
ashamed, heavy-hearted. 

Marie-Therese gibed at me for thus mutely drooping in 
the corner. She called me morose, a young bear. She flashed 
her fine teeth at me in the gloom. She could not understand 
why I was so changed of a sudden. After all, she laughed, 
I was now only thirty minutes nearer my marriage than I 
had been the half hour before — why so despondent 2 


CHAPTEK XV 


“His heart was ravished with her and his mind was moved and he 
desired greatly her company.” 


J udith . 


It is strange but I who have found a flow of words to 
depict the adventures of imaginary characters, to analyse 
my hero’s passions, to enlarge on the psychology of fictitious 
situations, am all of a stammer when I try to tell you my own 
story. Surely it should he simple enough. I have hut to 
listen to my memory, to hear my heart, then write the truth. 
Yet sometimes I feel the task is too much for me. My 
pen halts, I balk in putting down on paper this recital of a 
squandered, muddled existence. Conscious of my public, 
to please my readers, I have written many books, some fine 
books among them, but mostly books that sicken me, bidding 
in every line for popularity. Xow for once, jotting down 
my own life, I need not be a sycophant to the world. The 
artist in me prompts me to sum up my span, my breathing 
spell. I have thought a man’s own story is the best he 
can write, I shall find the right words, words of living 
truth. What I have suffered will tell in my phrases. I 
shall graft my heart-beats onto the page as though the ink 
were my blood. And yet, I say, as I approach the crisis of 
my life, as I come to describe the turbid years that led me 
into crime, I hesitate. Like an amateur I flounder for an 
adjective, I am at a loss for the word that pictures and 
convinces. 

It is a dreary business this, looking back on a former 
self. In my mind’s eye I see the man I then was, brand- 
new to life, plastic, and my heart stands still with pity, 
with self-contempt too. I was one of the army of young 

87 


88 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


provincials whom every year Paris engulfs. I had come 
from Tours imagining myself the undiscovered Baudelaire 
of the century. I believed that a few months’ sojourn in 
Paris would ensure me the recognition my talent deserved. 
But I found that in the capital, clever men are as rife as 
beggars and that phrases of mine which had rung out son- 
orously in my staid birth-place, here, in the surge of the city, 
made no noise at all. 

I began to be oppressed by a sense of artistic incompe- 
tence. I heard the name of a successful author and winced. 
I calculated his years, compared them with mine, wondered 
when I could equal him. I was tortured constantly with a 
sort of nostalgia of fame. 

A magazine, L’Orchidee Fleurie , finally accepting the 
madrigal I had read to Madame Colbert, I took heart for a 
while, but when the poem appeared and no upheaval oc- 
curred in literature, again I turned morose, bitterly hurt. 

For the next few months, I made no headway whatso- 
ever. I was without initiative, without the gift of self- 
advertisement that gives the artist his start. I could only 
dream, turn over the leaves of my discarded novel, buoy my- 
self up with absinthe and complain to Madame Colbert. 

A little soldiering might have made a man of me. Had 
I served the compulsory time in the army, I would have 
been fitter to cope with life, but the bracing ordeal of the 
barracks was denied me. Because I was the only son of a 
widow, I had been exempt from military service. 

All unconsciously I was falling under the spell of Marie- 
Therese, gradually I was growing in love with her. My life 
was beginning to divide itself into the days when I saw her 
and the days when I did not. From the first there was 
nothing idealistic in this passion. It was perverse from 
the beginning; by this I mean it was not even the beauty 
of this creature — and she did possess a haggard loveliness 
of sorts — that fascinated me — no, it was her physical de- 
fects, the disproportion of her body. I cannot analyse why, 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


89 


but the fact that her shoulders were too broad for her hips 
and thighs, enthralled me. The largeness of her hands, 
the rank nature of her hair — these faults held me as might 
so many qualities. The down that gilded her long taper- 
ing arms inspired me with insane curiosity. It was the 
very abnormality of her appearance that fascinated me. In 
all her movements, in her walk, at once languorous and 
shambling like the lolloping of a panther, there was some* 
thing torrid that took the brilliance out of others. Yes, it 
was for her pagan, feverish vitality I found her beautiful 
and indeed, what is beauty in a woman but her individual 
appeal ? 

It was not until the winter was more than half spent 
that I realised how profound a hold Marie-Therese had on 
me. She had absorbed me as it were. I had not a thought 
that did not refer to her. Every strophe I hung together 
bore her stamp. She was for me the creative impulse, the 
woman of the hour without whose influence I could no more 
write than a bird can sing without a throat. 

It was a letter from home that opened my eyes to my 
dependence on her. Towards the close of the winter, my 
mother wrote me asking if I was not coming back for the 
reveillon. I pictured the tedious function, the long watches 
round the fire, the church-going, the interchange of visits, 
the compliments and the never-ending dinner with which 
the province celebrates the New Year. The Anselmes, 
Bernardette, all these people would reclaim me, while here 
in Paris, life would throb on at high pressure. I should see 
the Hue Nationale again and the sweep of the Loire while 
Marie-Therese would ignore the thought of me. She would 
go her round of visits, greet new acquaintances and make 
friends of them with the smile she had used for me. To- 
wards the close of the letter, my mother called on me to 
account for my winter’s work. She had seen some verses 
of mine in If OrcJiidee Fleurie, she wrote, at least she had 
read a poem signed by my name, but she hesitated to believe 


90 A WOMANS MAM 

that her son could be responsible for these depraved thoughts 
set to rhyme. 

I wrote in answer that I would come home for a time — 
I could do no less, but neither justified nor explained my 
poem. What did I care after all? What was this woman 
to me? Since I had been in Paris, her photograph and 
that of Bernardette had kept watch over me on either side 
of my mantel-piece. I had had visitors, there had been 
occasions when I should have turned these card-board faces 
to the wall, but my fiancee and my mother were not alive 
enough in my heart to make their pictures vital. Indiffer- 
ent, I let their photographs stare out on all the disorders 
of a young man’s life. 

During the winter, I had had several intrigues, but as 
they neither affected my work nor altered my character, 
there is nothing to tell about them. It was only as I realised 
the obsession Marie-Therese was growing to be to me, it 
was only then and for the first time I felt I was unfaithful 
to the girl I meant to make my wife. 

Yet between Madame Colbert and me there had passed 
none of the glances, hand-pressures, silences that begin the 
ritual of love. She had never left her hand in mine an 
instant longer than custom prescribed. She had never talked 
unduly of passion or made use of the anecdotes and half 
words that feel the way for an intrigue, and yet somehow 
indefinably Marie-Therese had made me understand that 
my pursuit of her would not be unavailing. 

I do not mean by this that she showed as yet any marked 
taste for me. M o, my hope was grounded on my gradual 
perception of her character, on my realisation of her tem- 
perament. It was as I understood her better, I began to 
desire her, for I was never one to pursue the far-off and un- 
attainable in women. I have but to know that a woman is 
inaccessible for her to lose the charm of her sex for me. 
I put this down to the fact that in spite of my poetic trend, 


A WOMANS MAN- 


91 


in spite of my exalted, idealistic fancies, my nature is set 
in a materialistic mould. 

I had taken to so Bohemian a mode of life, to such 
disordered habits and irregular hours that the prospect of 
packing and travelling hack to my staid home oppressed me. 
I waited on in Paris, I remember, till a day or so before 
New Year. 

I could not bring myself to leave earlier for every night 
now I saw Marie-Therese. I went out with her and her 
friends. The Princess Poumistorf came with us, Colbert 
himself sometimes, — it is strange but ever since I had begun 
to covet his wife, I felt a certain sympathy for this vapid 
and benign-faced man — Marie-Therese had accepted me as 
a squire. After the theatre I called the carriage for her, 
I carried her cloak, its scent turned me giddy. I laid 
it on her shoulders and the aigrette in her hair tickled my 
face. 

In spite of my intimate thoughts of Marie-Therese, I 
was diffident in my manner to her still. It was not her 
virtue — she had none, nor her intellect — she had little — 
that intimidated me. No, it was her garish beauty, her ex- 
cess of jewels, her luxurious clothes, her very hands looked 
so expensive with their pink nails and tenderly tinted palms. 
Besides I recognised in this woman the refinement of de- 
pravity, I felt her to be such a virtuoso in love that I feared 
I could never formulate the phrase, “I love you,” under the 
stare of her kohl-rimmed eyes. It was presumptuous in me, 
I knew it, to tell this artist in vice how much I wanted her. 


CHAPTER XVI 

“Thy heart hath gone too far in this world.” 

Esdras II. 

Against the horizon, the spire of the Cathedral tapered. 
Another spurt of the train and I should see the town of Tours 
fringed with poplars. I lay back in my seat, the exhilara- 
tion of travel was on me. I was tingling with the mental 
activity, the jerk and rattle of the train always induces in 
me. 

During the journey, I had imagined that Marie-Therese 
was travelling with me. I had pictured that she and I were 
running away from the world together. In my fancy, I 
saw her beside me, her shoulder against mine, her hair flut- 
tering against my cheek, and just within reach of my lips, 
the lobe of her ear inordinately rouged, elongated by her 
heavy earrings. My God, if it were true, if on opening my 
eyes I could see on the rack facing me, her valise marked 
with her initials! So I dreamt willing Marie-Therese to 
think of me. I caressed her in thought and in this mental 
dissipation, I tasted an acute sweetness such as experience 
rarely realises. 

Though I had spent only some five months from home, 
my mother looked older than I remembered her. When with 
her thin arms, she drew me against her, I had a presenti- 
ment that she might not live long and tried to put some 
warmth into the kiss I gave her. “My son, my son,” she 
kept saying. She seemed unduly moved and so did Yvonne 
who stood grinning in the doorway hugging my satchel. 
They were both old women, I realised, to whom my home- 
coming was an event, and I must humour them. 

Between the windows whose drawn blinds secluded us 
92 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


93 


from the town, the table was laid for me with everything 
I liked best. I talked as I ate, looking from my mother to 
Yvonne and back again. Footsteps echoed in the street 
with the muffled beat I remembered. Our clock chimed from 
the landing. A sense of comfort, of well-being suffused me. 
My affections as unstable as a weather-cock veered from 
Paris a little and turned towards my childhood. 

I went to bed early that night and slept soundly between 
the lavender-scented sheets. 

On the morrow, the landau, the very same, drove my 
mother and me to visit the Anselmes. During the night 
snow had fallen and the country was spread with white. 
The horses went slower, it seemed, than in my childhood. 
The wheels made no sound ; my mother talked to me of Ber- 
nardette, her voice rang out imperious, distinct, in the 
frozen air. 

As we approached the Anselmes’ porch, my heart beat 
fast. Not with impatience, not with ardour certainly, but 
with the anxiety that always assails me before an event, 
for it was something of an event to meet my fiancee again, 
my embryo wife whom I could not indefinitely go on ignor- 
ing. 

When, however, I once more saw Bernardette, I felt 
somewhat relieved. She looked so gentle, so fresh to life 
and somehow prettier than I remembered her. She sat be- 
side the window sewing; the snowy landscape reflected a 
white light that fell slant-wise over her face. Very absorbed, 
very composed she seemed, only the cloth she was hemming 
fluttered in her little hands. Her open work-basket full 
of bright silks lay beside her on the broad sill. She would 
reach for her scissors now and then. On her finger, I saw 
the ring I had given her and I noticed that her arm had the 
curves of a woman’s now. 

For the first time since we were grown, I was alone with 
her. Through the open door of the room beyond, I could 
hear my mother and the Anselmes chatting. I could hear 


94 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


the fire crackling and the soft thud of the snow as it fell 
from the over-charged branches. Bernardette and I talked 
in a low tone of the most casual things in the world. I lis- 
tened again to her sweet, immature voice. It waked some 
echo in my heart. She and I would get on well enough to- 
gether, I determined. I drew my chair closer to hers. 

Somehow I knew she had been thinking of me constantly 
since I was gone from Tours. I asked her if she had taken 
off the ring I had wished on to her finger before I left. She 
shook her head looking at me with a deep, strange look for 
her. In her eyes something told me that if I tried to kiss 
her, she would let me. 

I glanced over my shoulder, the door was gone ajar, we 
were free of chaperones for once. I slipped my arm about 
her and suddenly she drooped against me as though her 
strength was gone. In the eerie light her face lay close 
to mine, her eyes were half shut, she was smiling in a tender, 
dazed fashion. I drew her against me and kissed her igno- 
rant lips. I was thinking of Marie^Therese all the while 
wondering if I should ever be so enterprising with her. I 
was thinking it is easy enough to kiss a woman you don’t 
love, what takes courage is to kiss the woman you do love. 

When my mother and the Anselmes entered the room, 
they found me looking out at the country, at fields as white 
as though the dawn had crystallised there. My mother sug- 
gested I was blocking out the light and that Bernardette 
could not see to go on with her work. 

The following days passed for me with an irritating 
slowness. I was grown all impatience to be back again in 
Paris. I would look at the clock that stood on our parlour 
mantel. “At this hour,” thought I, “Marie-Therese is driv- 
ing home from the Bois. Who is with her? When she 
reaches the house, whom will she ask to her boudoir? The 
lamp will not be lighted yet, it will be dusk. Who is that 
some one, for she never goes alone ?” 

Before my eyes, the parlour hearth, my mother with set 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


95 


lips knitting, Monsieur le Cure flipping tlie snuff off his 
soutane, all would fade and instead I would see Marie- 
Therese trailing into a dark room with some dim figure be- 
hind her. 

My only interest was to question Monsieur Godot as to 
the Colbert menage. I tried to get at the truth of the stories 
I had heard concerning the publisher’s wife, but the old 
notary was the soul of discretion. He had been secretary to 
Colbert before the latter’s marriage only and knew nothing 
of Madame. No, Godot could not, or would not perhaps, tell 
me her history. I talked to him of her though. I described 
how great authors listened to her. I said she was different 
from other women and the old man would look at me quiz- 
zically over his glasses. 

Ernest, too, was my confidant. He had returned to Tours 
for the New Year holidays. He had left Paris a week be- 
fore I had and was now as homesick for the capital as I 
was. I confided more to him than to Monsieur Godot. I 
admitted I loved Marie-Therese. Loved was the word I 
used though it was merely a physical sympathy I felt for 
her then. I thought my confession startling, but I might 
have been the wind piping for all the impression I made on 
Ernest. His own affair of the heart preoccupied him. I 
could get no attention from him, only rhapsodies about the 
model he had met eight months ago at some cabaret. He had 
taken her to his lodgings in Paris that night. She had 
stayed on there ever since. Now he was eager to be back 
with her. He was a perfect fool over the girl, her name was 
a by-word and I wondered at him. 

I decided never to talk of myself to him again, but al- 
ready my confession had had its effect. Not on Ernest cer- 
tainly, but on myself, a vital effect. Who does not know 
that to express a sentiment is to invoke that sentiment, to 
give it body. I had said, “I love Marie-Therese.” 

A phrase can cause a sickness, work a cure, galvanise a 
passion into being. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


“I brought you up with gladness, but with sorrow and heaviness have 
I lost you. 

But what shall I now do with you? I am a widow and for- 
saken.” 

Esdras II. 

The dullness of the provinces so told on me that before a 
week was passed I felt I must break away from Tours or else 
go mad. 

It was, I recall, one night after supper when I first 
hinted that I must be off again to Paris. My mother and 
I were playing backgammon. She moved the counters with 
an irritating slowness while I yawned till my jaws ached. 
At mention of the word Paris — I had approached the sub- 
ject with infinite circumlocution — my mother started. Her 
hand half-way to the backgammon board, stopped, and lift- 
ing on me her pale, stern eyes, she confronted me as though 
poised for reproach, for accusation. I feared she was about 
to preach, to tell me it was not my work that drew me to 
Paris as I pretended, it was some woman, but no, after 
a moment, she looked down, her throat working and as she 
pushed a counter into place, she asked me if I would not 
stay with her at least till over Sunday. 

“The Anselmes have asked us for early dinner as al- 
ways,” she said, “and Monsieur Godot will be there and 
the notary with the contract.” 

The contract, good heavens ! She meant the marriage con- 
tract between Bemardette and myself. 

“Why such haste?” I asked rudely. I was exasperated. 
By what right did my mother hustle me through life like 
this? I was a man now, no longer the flaccid youth over 

96 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


97 


whom she had tyrannised. I had not been to Paris for noth- 
ing, I would sign no contract till I was ready. For once 
I would choose my own time. I did not mean to break off 
my engagement, but to postpone my marriage as long as 
possible. It was not that I felt a particular distaste for 
Bernardette. No, as I have said before, I liked her rather. 
She was not flax to my fire, certainly, but then, even in my 
most idealistic moments, I had never hoped to make a love 
match. Like most Frenchmen I had grown to believe that 
love and marriage are opposite. With us love is romance, 
with its fantasy and enchantment, while marriage is a ques- 
tion of convention, of dot, a partnership grounded on a com- 
munity of interests, a firm in which the woman should play 
the silent partner. Bernardette I had always felt, would 
serve the purpose of a wife as well as another. 

“Why such haste ?” I asked my mother again and all the 
grievances I had stored from boyhood against her, broke 
out in my voice. Paris, with its night-clubs, its swirling 
waltzes, its pungent scents and bare shoulders had my alle- 
giance now. I felt no awe of my mother, of this old lady 
with pale hands worrying at her shawl. Brutally I told her 
that she must give up running my life. I would have no 
more of her meddling. 

She gasped with astonishment, her face ossified. In- 
deed she had reason to look agog. Never before had I said 
a curt word to her. Even lately since my return when she 
had held forth on my extravagance in Paris, when she had 
reproached me with what she called the “indecent trend” 
of my last work, I had listened submissively. A day or so 
ago, she had implored me to give up absinthe. To keep her 
quiet, I had hypocritically acquiesced. I uncorked no more 
the flask of Pernod that stood in our wine-closet between 
the cassis and the home-made gin. On the sly though, I 
had bought a bottle of my own and kept it hidden in my 
room. I do not mean by this I was a confirmed absintheur 
yet. I was no drunkard certainly, but I could not bear to 


98 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


feel, if I craved a sip of the invigorating drug, it was out of 
my reach and I must go thirsty and uninspired. 

The very afternoon, I remember, that preceded this 
scene with my mother, I had sat brooding in my room striv- 
ing to work at a poem I meant to dedicate to Marie-Therese. 
I had dizzied myself with the absinthe she herself had rec- 
ommended, trying to spur myself into the fever that pre- 
cedes creative work. The stuff had set my nerves aj angle 
and was possibly responsible for the way I now flared out 
at my mother. 

In justice to myself, I will say that my outburst sur- 
prised me nearly as much as it did my mother. I could 
not believe it was my voice that rang out in our decent 
home, or my unguarded footsteps that, as I paced the floor, 
set our china-cupboard aj ingle. 

“No, no, you cannot understand me,” cried I, the once 
mealy-mouthed son. “I am an artist, I must be free. No 
woman shall dictate to me, no woman shall ruin my life.” 

As I passed and re-passed before the mantel, I caught in 
the glass a glimpse of my long, pale face and tremulous 
lips. “No woman shall interfere between me and my work, 
none, none,” I cried, striding from the spinet to a stand 
charged with samplers and back again. “None, none,” I 
reiterated with the over-emphasis of the weak. 

I had come to a standstill before my mother. I felt 
the moment was crucial. I was pitting myself against this 
woman who till now had always been the stronger of us 
two. She had regained her composure and sat irritatingly 
calm. I saw her sum up the position of the counters on 
the board before, with a sweep of her hand, she brushed them 
into the box. As she was placing them in rows, “How Paris 
has changed my son,” she said. 

I never recall this scene now but I feel a pain at my 
heart. I remember the table with its tapestry cloth across 
which I shouted. I remember how I stood trembling in spite 
of my new-found audacity. I can see again my mother, 


A WOMANS MAX 99 

pale, fumbling with the lid of the checker box and mortally 
sad, I know. 

The misfortune of this woman was that she could not 
cajole, that she could not formulate the graceful phrases 
most women rattle off so pat. Emotion became her ill as 
it becomes a man. She sounded cantankerous when she was 
heart-broken. 

After a pause, “You want to put off your marriage for 
a while,” she said. “Good, but you will have yourself to ex- 
plain your state of mind to the Anselmes. I do not pretend 
to understand it. You will have to tell Bernardette you do 
not want to marry her yet.” 

This prospect appalled me. I saw myself verbally floun- 
dering before the Anselmes, before Bernardette and Mon- 
sieur Godot and the Xotary with the contract in his hand. 
I then and there determined to get away from Tours and 
give the situation the slip. I was angry with my mother 
and indeed, she should have consulted me before naming 
the hour for drawing up the contract. I had supposed that 
I need not take Bernardette to wife for a few years at least, 
and here I found that I was expected to bind myself to this 
girl irrevocably and at once. 

“You will stay till over Sunday,” my mother summed 
up in her dictatorial voice, “you have not been to church 
since you came home. Yesterday Monsieur le Cure told 
me you had not been to Confessional either.” 

“What is the good, I do not believe any more,” I an- 
swered gripping the back of a chair. This was not strictly 
true; I had still at tunes vague spiritual longings, pangs of 
conscience that I named superstition, and I never wanted 
anything but I prayed for it. 

There was a silence. I did not dare look up. “You 
do not believe in God any more ?” I caught a rustling and 
knew that my mother had risen. 

“Xo.” I braced myself to look at her. She was erect, 
her thin hands pressed together. My father’s picture made 


100 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


& background for her. I opened my lips to say more — 
with a gesture she silenced me. Yvonne had come into the 
room. Our old servant carried a tray, bright with egg-shell 
cups and redolent of steaming camomile in a teapot. The 
genial rattle of the china reassured me and I went on in a 
lighter vein to talk of atheism, just as I had heard free- 
thinkers hold forth in Madame Colbert’s boudoir. Still, I 
dared not look at my mother so I stared at Yvonne as she 
poured out the camomile. 

The old servant was slow to get my drift. She smiled 
at me leniently between the starched wings of her head- 
dress till suddenly, “Oh, Madame,” she cried, “does Mon- 
sieur Armand mean he is a heathen ?” 

“That is what Paris has done for us, my poor Yvonne,” 
answered my mother. 

“God is a fable,” I assured, airily lighting a cigarette. 
My mother had forbidden me to smoke in the salon. “God 
does not exist, I have found it out, but that does not make 
me a worse man, Yvonne.” 

The old servant flushed all over her gnarled and honest 
face. She looked left and right like a hen crossing the road 
with its brood. She was at a loss to answer me when sud- 
denly in the voice of one who throws out an irrefutable 
argument, “Very surely, Monsieur Armand,” she beamed, 
“God does exist, or else tell me who made the world?” 

With just such homely truth, she had soothed me before 
when once in my too subtle childhood I had found a flaw 
in our faith. 

Now I felt an unaccountable tightening in my throat. 
Without touching the camomile, without saying good-night 
or looking once again at my mother, I took my candle, lighted 
it and went slowly up the stairs to bed. On the landing, our 
old clock gabbled huskily counting the seconds just as it 
used when I was younger. 

I could not sleep that night. I sat by my table with my 
head in my hands, thinking. I was tense to catch the sound 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


101 


of a footstep. I hoped my mother might come to my door, 
I would apologise then, smooth over the things I had said, 
and perhaps arrange to leave Tours without offending her. 

When I heard the swish of her skirt on the stairs, I half 
rose determined to go to her, but when without relaxing 
her measured tread, she went by my door and passed on to 
her room, I sank back in my chair. It would be weakness, 
I decided, to go to her. Another interview could lead to 
nothing. I could not do what she asked me, I could not 
give up all the turbulent promises of youth to settle down: 
with the province-bred child she had chosen for me. I could 
not do it, not yet, at any rate. As an artist, I must put my 
art first and, if by doing so I hurt my mother, why hurt her 
I must, I had no other choice. 

Nevertheless I sat, irresolute, late into the night. An un- 
canny stillness pervaded our house. Only now and then a 
board creaked as though a footstep were approaching cau- 
tiously. I knew it was the wood expanding after the au- 
tumn rains. Far down the street a dog barked, at my elbow 
the candle sputtered, when it burnt low I lit the lamp. I 
packed my valise. Some of my belongings I stored in my 
trunk, strapped it and addressed it to Paris. 

It was dawn by now. I sat down at the table to begin a 
letter. “Dear Bernardette,” I wrote, but that sounded cere- 
monious and insincere. I tried another heading. I ex- 
plained that the offer of some magazine work called me sud- 
denly to Paris. I was sorry not to have seen her to say 
good-bye. As soon as I could, I would return to Tours and 
plan our future. 

This false letter satisfied me. It was not in my scheme 
to offend Bernardette. I liked her, perhaps too well, to tell 
her frankly I did not love her. I then wrote to my mother, 
I repeated to her what I had said to Bernardette. I pre- 
tended to have received the su m mons to Paris early in the 
afternoon and to have forgotten to speak of it. The excuse 


102 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


was transparent, but I hoped when once I was gone my 
mother would back me up in my statement. 

I enjoyed writing this letter. Although I never im- 
agined that the breach between my mother and I could be 
definite, I pretended to think it was. I pretended to be 
done with my home and with her. When I came back to 
claim Bernardette, I assured, I would live otherwhere 
than in this house. I aired my views on the rights of the 
artist and indulged in literary dissipation. I left this note 
sealed on my table, but the letter to Bernardette I put in my 
pocket ready for posting. 

By now it was light. On my shelf I could see the books 
I was leaving and almost read their titles. 

I took up my valise, I opened my door. The corridor 
window was still shuttered and I felt my way downstairs. 
I fumbled at the chain that barred the front door. I un- 
fastened the clamp and the links swung down with a muffled 
clank. 

As I passed into the street, I glanced up at the facade 
of our house. I little knew it would be years before I saw 
it again. Then as now, the blind of my mother’s room would 
be drawn. With anxiety, with anguish, I would look to- 
wards it then. Now I went away lightly, as on an adven- 
ture, cracking the frost under my heel. 

As I passed the post-office, I posted my letter to Ber- 
nardette. I was a free agent now, I congratulated myself. 
To the artist, women were a very mill-stone. I was done 
with them. I was off to Paris where incidentally lived 
Marie-Therese. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” 

Proverbs. 

Foe a week I have not found heart to go on with my 
story. An incident has occurred that for the moment has 
blurred the past for me. Sunday last, at Paris Plage, the 
dominant figure of my young manhood rose before me as 
an old woman, and intervened between me and the Maries 
Therese I remember. 

It is my custom now to pass the Saturday till Monday 
at some sea-side resort. To compensate myself for the week’s 
drudgery, conscientiously I inhale the brine. I am middle- 
aged now, faddy and meticulous as is only an old maid or a 
literary man. 

Last Sunday then, I was at Paris Plage. The windows 
of the restaurant were thrown wide open on the sea. I sat 
in a square of sunshine savouring the Corona I allow my- 
self after lunch. My brain felt numb and I was happy. 
At a table opposite me, a decadent-looking youth was talking 
with a round-shouldered woman in a dolman. I could not 
see her face, but I judged from his as he bent towards her 
that for all her lumpy back, she must be passably fascinating 
still. 

I never see a man and a woman together, absorbed in each 
other, but I watch them. Though the cues and the responses 
differ but little, the comedy of the sexes will entertain me 
always. Last Sunday, then, as I passed out of the restau- 
rant, I adjusted my pince-nez and looked over my shoulder 
to observe what manner of woman this was. At first I had 
the impression of a bluish-white mask in which the teeth 
shone yellow. I have grown so near-sighted of late years 

103 


104 A WOMAN’S MAN 

that I did not recognise the face till it flicked its eyelids at 
me. 

“Tiens, it is Armand de Vaucourt,” cried a voice I ren 
membered. 

“Good day, dear Master,” and she held out to me both 
hands — the hands I remembered so well. I bent over them 
once more. Madame Colbert asked me to bring a chair to 
her table. I did so. She introduced the young man, I for- 
get his name. He smiled vapidly while she told him it was 
at least ten years since she had seen me. We had not met, 
she said, since the failure of her husband’s firm, since the 
death of “that poor J acques” had decided her to leave Paris 
and live “sur la branche” as it were, travelling from Baden- 
Baden to Aix-la-Chapelle, from Aix to Vichy, from Vichy 
to Ostend. 

I listened feeling that life is incongruous, farcical as a 
dream, too fantastic to be taken seriously if it were not 
for the pain it causes before we can get through with it. 

“Let me have a good look at you again, farceur” and 
Madame Colbert moved the cruet Her hand was swollen, 
I could hardly bring myself to smile back at her. 

I was thinking that I had known this bundle of flesh 
when it was a woman’s body, lithe, erect. The throbbing 
hand-grasp, the sinuous lips, the eyes that had lit in me the 
torments of a sensual love, where were they? 

The young man, Madame Colbert’s friend, must have 
thought me dull for a celebrity. 

All this was last Sunday, I say, and since then I have 
found it harder to evoke the Marie-Therese I remembered. 
I recalled some flavour of her though by walking from the 
Pont d’Austerlitz through the Place de la Concorde into the 
Parc Monceau. Her house is pulled down now and a new 
building is being set up in its place. The workmen whistled, 
the chisels clicked, the tar steamed. I went back as I had 
come through the same streets. 

At the corner of the Eue Koyale, I noticed a kiosk where 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


105 


a flower-stand used to be. Each day I would pass by the 
booth on my way to Marie-Therese. Under the striped 
awning, among the cheerful bouquets, some solitaire flower 
with wide, star-like chalice would give me a beckoning look 
as though to say, “Take me along with you, young man, I 
will speak for you.” Later when the street lamps flared and 
I retraced my steps, the booth would be boarded up as though 
storing the sweetness it had held that day. So it was, I re- 
member, shuttered discreetly when I passed by it on the 
night of nights. 

I remember as I paced the streets that night, too fever- 
ish to sleep, I thought: “She loves me — the proof is she is 
going to give me the only convincing proof of love a woman 
can give — herself.” 

In a new-found humility, I wondered what a woman so 
worldly-wise, so versed in the lore of the senses, so elegant, 
so notorious, so intellectually perverse, saw in me, a for- 
lorn provincial, hardly grown out of ungracious boyhood. 
Over and over I asked myself, “How can she love me?” for 
I was not free from the masculine belief that no woman, with 
the exception of the courtesan, gives herself without the sac- 
rificial call of love. 

I have learnt since then and thank God for it, what a 
woman’s love is, how it helps, regenerates, renews a man. I 
know now there was no love in that which drove Marie- 
Ther£se to me. There was vice, appetite, sexual curiosity — 
she was that very woman of the Proverbs “whose feet take 
hold on death, whose steps go down to hell.” 

But I am too far ahead in my story. When having 
slipped away from Tours as I have described and broken 
with my mother, I returned to Paris I found Marie-Therese 
apparently very much my friend, eager for my literary ad- 
vancement, more than ever my Muse, my Egeria. Our rela- 
tions were ideal, I quoted my prose to her, I spouted my 
poetry. Under cover of psychology, erotic science, I analysed 
for her the passion that was undermining me. She listened, 


106 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


inclining her head, looking at me, as at a conspirator, ask- 
ance, and I felt she understood me. Her untidy fringe of 
hair threw a shadow over her eyes while she worried at her 
rings turning them round and round on her fingers. She 
wore always a barbaric display of jewels. Morning or eve- 
ning it was all one, diamonds, turquoises, scarabs weighted 
her hands. Those hands, I have never forgotten them. How 
morbidly civilised they looked with their long pink glowing 
nails. What was aesthetic, sensitive in this creature had 
concentrated in these effete and tapering fingers. 

I saw Marie-Therese daily now. We were often alone 
together. My instinct warned me it was time to tell her I 
loved her. I fancied she treated me differently than she 
treated others. Not more familiarly perhaps, hut in a more 
meaningful fashion. Her manner with me was tentative, 
significant, as though she were putting me a riddle and hint- 
ing at the answer. 

I had always understood that Madame Colbert was never 
free from a love intrigue, hut though I spied on her as much 
as I dared, I could not decide whom she cared for now. I 
knew she had not seen Kerlavoz since his departure for 
Verdun. I knew she had not written to him lately, the 
Princess Koumistorf had confided this to me. She had it 
from Madame Colbert’s own lips. I believed Marie-Therese 
to he heart-free for the moment. I realised my chance, hut 
always when I was about to speak, my cursed timidity gagged 
me. 

I decided to write Marie-Therese. I never took so much 
pains over any letter as over these eight pages written close 
with protestations, pleadings, rhapsodies. With a childish 
hypocrisy and a pretentious flourish of the pen, I declared 
to Marie-Therese I had decided never to visit her again. In 
parenthesis, nothing was further from my mind, hut I hoped 
this news of mine might draw from her the definite expres- 
sion of what she felt for me. Only some accident, I wrote, 
underscoring the words, could bring me face to face with 


A WOMAN’S MAN- 


107 


her again. I should avoid her now since I must, for my 
peace of mind, forget her. And much more, a la Chateau- 
briand. 

I think as I remember this letter, it was a little too lit- 
erary to sound sincere. Nevertheless when I had copied my 
effusion, I was more than satisfied with it and went out, the 
blood ringing in my head, to post what I then considered 
a prose poem. 

After a few hours, however, I began to have misgivings. 
That was a silly phrase of mine, the one ending “burn this 
as soon as you have read it.” What must she think of that ? 
She so wise in love-letters. It looked as though I were 
afraid of her husband. No, there was no doubting it that 
“burn this as soon as you have read it” was a mistake. It 
showed inexperience, it was crude, schoolboyish. I went hot 
when- 1 thought of it. 

No one will credit what I suffered over this scribbled 
line. I would have given ten years of my life to get back 
my letter. 


CHAPTEK XIX 


“Oh ye men, how can it be but women should be strong, seeing they 
do thus.” 


Esdras I. 


I spent a restless night. I pictured my letter moving 
imperturbably towards the goal I myself bad given it. I 
pictured Marie-Therese reading it, in the morning in her 
bedroom. 

Once when Colbert was showing me over the bouse, I 
bad caught a glimpse of her room. Since then, in fancy, 
I bad seen it often again and breathed its atmosphere satu- 
rated with the acute perfume she used. The bed I remem- 
ber, faced the door, a deep bed bung with lace like an altar 
and beyond was the dressing-room panelled in glass. Here 
then, in her bedroom, in this sanctum of feminine intelli- 
gence, my stupid, blundering letter would be brought her. 
Sitting by her dressing-table she would read it. She would 
smile before she finished it and let it fall, flutter out of her 
hand. . . . Through this idiotic composition I had lost her 
perhaps. 

I soon decided that my worst fears were confirmed. 
Marie-Therese sent me no answer. I went almost mad with 
uncertainty. I could hardly get through the hours of the 
oppressive spring days. I walked and walked in the Bois. 
With a gesture regular as a maniac’s, I would take out my 
watch and note how long I must wait before the next post 
came in. 

Even now sometimes, when I pass through the Bois in 
May, when the exhalations of spring meet me in a gust, I 
can recall something of the sensual fever that burnt me in 
those days. 


108 


A WOMAN'S MAN 


109 


This love experiment into which I had plunged so 
casually, swamped me now, took all my forces, all my 
thoughts. One cannot play with impunity at the symptoms 
of love. 

There is a bench overlooking the lake where I would sit 
drumming with my heels on the sward, tears hack of my eye- 
lids. In those days, I cried as easily as a girl. I was in- 
deed a strange creature for my twenty years, made of child- 
ishness and depravity, of materialism and palpitant sensi- 
bility. 

I do not remember how many nights and days I dragged 
through, sleeping fitfully, eating with a tightening of the 
throat, tramping to the rhythm of the same thought always — 
“Why don't I hear from her?" 

In my mind I had so appropriated Marie-Therese that 
I felt indignant, hurt, surprised even, never to find her wait- 
ing in my room for me. Surely some day when I opened my 
door, within arms' reach I should see her, the impure and 
lovely presence. Then suddenly my mood veered. It would 
come over me how chimeric was my hope, how unrealisahle, 
how presumptuous. Other men could have the mistresses 
of their choice, hut I, through some quirk of circumstance, 
must be cut off from the harmony and wonder of a life- 
time. 

Once I came into the porter's lodge to find crammed 
into my mail-box a thick envelope. My heart gave a double 
knock, but no, the letter was from my mother — a sad and 
bitter letter, headed “my undutiful son." It began sternly 
I remember, but the upbraidings, the reproaches petered out 
towards the end. Through my mother's set and scriptural 
style, I read her bewilderment, her soreness of heart. Her 
son, her idealised hoy who had turned on her so unaccount- 
ably ! The weakness, the cringing of love, spoke towards the 
close of the letter. I remember one phrase, “If you come 
home soon, Armand, I can make all well between the An- 
selmes and you. They believe in the urgency of the work 


110 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


that called yon to Paris and Bernardette sends you her very 
kindest thoughts.” My mother enclosed a cheque for a 
month’s expenses. 

Under ordinary circumstances, this letter would have 
touched me, hut I had so hoped to see another writing that 
I fumed as I read. 

My answer was curt and non-committal. I thanked my 
mother for the cheque. She was always generous, I wrote. 
I hoped soon to he able to support myself and repay her the 
money she had spent on me. I liked this sentence, it gave 
me hack my self-respect. In fancy I saw myself already 
rich, aloof, celebrated, raining gold on my mother with a 
lavish hut indifferent hand. 

The poor woman, I know now how she must have longed 
for my answer. I was her all, she was terribly alone, her 
own people were dead, some of my father’s relatives lived 
still but at Bordeaux; we never saw them. Sometimes they 
sent us black-edged cards before a funeral or dragees after 
a baptism. I am sure that after my mother wrote me so 
pitifully, she must have entrusted Yvonne with a franc for 
the postman, to bribe him to be very careful of any letter 
from Paris. 

I passed another day or so on the rack. Sometimes I 
would wander through the Parc Monceau, taking the street 
where her hous6 was, but I did not go in, I dared not. She 
might not receive me and if she did, the mere thought of 
greeting her unnerved me, set my heart pounding. Others 
might be there to see my confusion. I would hurry when 
I came to her door and pass by with head averted as though 
I feared to face this stony facade alive with windows. In- 
deed her house had grown to have for me an overpowering 
individuality, though, as a matter of fact, it was on a piece 
with all the other houses in the street and did not differ 
from the general model by a stone. 

In the meantime, my work was going to pot. I was frit- 
tering away my brain. I seemed to have lost, whether due 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


111 


to my preoccupation about Marie-Therese, or to the absinthe 
I was beginning to indulge in more and more, all power of 
consecutive thought. I never went through a period so bare 
of inspiration, so empty of creative impulse. 

Towards the close of the week, such a sense of discour- 
agement, such a dead weight of disappointment, settled down 
on me that I determined to be done with all this waiting and 
watching, hoping against hope and spying on the post. My 
love enterprise had failed. Well and good, I must give it 
up. Covetous, delicious thoughts, sensual cravings, frenzy 
of desire, here was the end of it all. I would be done with 
Paris, done with Marie-Therese. I determined to go back 
to Tours and accept life as my mother offered it. Accept 
the inevitable wife and the home. 

It was, I remember, one afternoon that I determined on 
this. I had been tramping in the square, back of the Luxem- 
bourg, and had come to a standstill under the tall elms. 
Since then, I have often studied Verlaine’s statue set here 
in mid-garden. The bust of the poet cranes out of a pillar, 
struggles out of stone, but the marble encases him, holds him 
down just as in his life-time, women, passions, kept him 
chained and sunk him finally. 

“What woman,” I asked myself then, “is worth a man’s 
brain? None — not one of them.” And I turned back to 
the Rue de l’Universite to my lodging resigned almost, or so 
I thought then, to leaving Paris without again seeing Marie- 
Therese. 

I believed I was growing indifferent to her. I was 
strangely calm. Love is a flux and a reflux. Por the mo- 
ment I had used up my heart, I had so wanted to hear from 
her, so willed her to write. 


CHAPTER XX 


“She is empty and void and waste, the mistress of witchcrafts.” 

Nahum. 

A letter was awaiting me. The concierge put it into 
my hand. I took it without a pulse-heat and glanced at the 
address. The writing billowed across the envelope, it was 
her hand. Upstairs in my room, I had to sit down to read 
her letter, I felt so gone at the knees. It was no more than 
a paragraph. I took that in with one sweep of the eye and 
noted above her signature the stereotyped formula “Believe 
me, Monsieur, as ever yours.” Relief, joy surged over me, 
she was not angry at any rate. The worst had not happened, 
thank God I should see her again. 

The letter proved to he a formal invitation to a literary 
reception, to he held by Monsieur and Madame Colbert with- 
in the next few days. Her husband and herself, Marie- 
Therese wrote, would he delighted to see me on the date men- 
tioned. What did that mean ? Had she received my letter, 
or was this her way of snubbing me? Was this her way of 
telling me I was presumptuous and silly — merely a hoy 
whose effusions could only he ignored, forgotten as soon as 
read? Her casual note was like a douche to me or a slap 
across the face. I was a prey to depression, to self-dissatis- 
faction; how badly I had managed the affair. Should I 
never grow to he a man and he treated as such ? If I could 
not inspire love, could I not at least, by my attentions, com- 
promise, offend a woman? 

I do not remember another half hour of a more acute 
and aching vanity. I had begun the business all wrong, I 
concluded. A drivelling, pitiful method like mine was not 

112 


A WOMAN’S MAN 113 

the means to make use of in trying to win a woman such as 
Marie-Therese. 

In my first youth when I was curious about love I had 
studied the memoirs of famous roues: Cassanova, the 
Marechal de Richelieu, Lauzun; I had read their lives. 
How, I now asked myself, had these men fascinated so many 
women? Not by sentiment, not by rhetoric, not by devo- 
tion even. No, but by daring, by brutality, by some act of 
physical familiarity. I would change my method, I de- 
termined. 

Never, never would I make allusion to my letter. If 
Marie-Therese referred to it, I would laugh and say, “Oh, 
I’m well over that,” or “I have sentimental moments, but 
they pass.” In imagination I could hear her asking, “So 
soon?” to which I would answer, “Well, I am like that.” 
As for Madame Colbert’s reception, I would go to it. She 
had not hurt me by ignoring the love I once had felt for 
her. I was well cured, I would show her that. I would be 
easy, brilliant, witty, depravedly cynical, utterly, entirely 
fascinating and on the strength of this, I went out and bought 
myself some neckties. 

I did not keep to the programme of conduct I had 
sketched for myself in regard to Marie-Therese. When in 
her close, crowded room, she came towards me and slipped 
her cool, pulsing hand into mine, method, theory, precon- 
ceived plans, swirled in my brain. She too was moved; I 
saw it by the colour that passed over her face and flooded 
the whites of her eyes. I knew she had received my letter. 
I knew life held for me a supreme chance. My heart beat 
with an emotion that was half anguish, so distrustful do we 
grow of fate the instant we foresee the possibility of a com- 
plete happiness. 

During the days that followed, there was never a men- 
tion between us of the word love. It was as though we 
tacitly agreed that the sentiments that drove us one to the 
other, did not come under that name. Somehow Marie- 


114 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


Theresa made me feel that for us to play at the conventional 
drawing-room comedy that usually prefaces a liaison, for ua 
to go through the preliminary scene of a declaration and a 
mock refusal, would be a useless hypocrisy. 

This primitive creature ran her love affairs on a more 
direct practical and brutal basis than the average woman. 
She ignored all the backing and filling, all the tremors of 
conscience, that give spice to an intrigue. I felt .merely 
by the way she looked at me that she was planning how best 
we could meet, where at our own hours, freely and alone. 

At this stage of ours, her manner with me was both dic- 
tatorial and caressing, insidious and patronising. I, of the 
two, was the passive element waiting for her to take the 
initiative, to tell me how she had planned our future. Our 
roles were inverted, we were a strange pair of lovers. 

The inertia that during these last weeks had clouded my 
brain dispelled itself now. My imagination quickened. Like 
a river long dammed up, a flow of ideas, a flood of words, 
rushed through me, or rather my mind was as a kaleidoscope 
in which pattern after pattern takes form, infinitely re- 
flected reproduced a million times, always different yet al- 
ways made of the same stuff, for back of every fancy that 
drove me to put pen to paper was the face of Marie-Therese. 

In spite of her corrupt influence, I owe something to 
this woman. I owe her my recognition as an author. She 
was the concrete thought, the impetus that drove me to 
write on cafe tables, among sticky slops, of love in an af- 
fected, decadent, lurid style. A style very much the fashion 
in the eighties, thanks to Baudelaire. My spasmodic rhythms, 
the orgies of colour, the frenzies of sensation, I managed to 
crush into one verse, the demoniacal caresses that occurred 
at every few lines, the eyes shadowed with passion, etc., 
the mouths gaping like split pomegranates, and all the rest 
of it, made for me a certain vogue. 

I accepted notoriety easily enough, the consciousness that 
Marie-Therese loved me and would prove it, or at least found 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


115 


me to her taste, gave me assurance. My native inclination 
to regard myself as a personality was confirmed. I took 
to a more fantastic style of dress, encouraged my hair to 
grow and remembered to he lurid in my manner. In short, 
at this age I was very much the genius. 

In this time of promise, of expectancy, Paris held for 
me a flavour it has never regained. There are no more such 
nights as those when I would leave her house and thinking 
of her go homewards. Under the striped awnings, about the 
cafe tables, people would he crowded two and two. It seems 
to me that there were more lovers in the world then than 
now or more love as the poet understands it. As I walked, I 
would he conscious of the throbbing of my arteries, and 
when I took a deep breath, I could feel something in my 
breast — my heart — for a man must be very old, or very de- 
praved, before he outgrows the childishness, the intermittent 
idealism of passion, its pretty, valentine quality. 


CHAPTER XXI 


“So she caught him and kissed him and with an impudent face said 
unto him . . 


Proverbs. 


It was, I remember, a sultry night towards the end of 
June, one of those nights when it is hard to breathe, when 
the city reeks of hot asphalt and the sky is lit intermittently 
with fitful zigzags of lightning that the climax came. I 
was following Madame Colbert down the stairs of the opera ; 
Colbert and the other man of the party were gone ahead in 
search of the brougham. Marie-Therese kept a few steps 
in front of me, her cloak rippling down from stair to stair. 
I came up to her and touched her arm, her glove wrinkled 
under my fingers as though about to peal down like the 
slough of a snake. 

I found courage to speak in this night pulsing with 
lightning. “When,” I asked her, “are you coming to look 
over those notes of mine, the ones I’ve been telling you 
about, all those old pages that I’m afraid of losing and don’t 
dare take out of my room ?” 

She turned her face towards me ever so little. I saw in 
the groove of her lip, a dew of perspiration. Her throat 
looked polished as though deliciously smooth and humid to 
the touch. 

The suggestion I had just offered she herself had in- 
spired delicately as a woman knows how. I believe she 
willed me to ask her to my room, yet now she gave me a 
strange look, a look at once appraising, badgered and dis- 
trustful, a speculative look that meant: “What do I know 
of this man really, is he discreet ?” 

116 


A WOMAN’S MAN 117 

Her brougham drew up to the curb, her immaculate hus- 
band waved her in before she had decided to answer me. 

Pacing her in the brougham driving back to her house, 
I could tell nothing from her expression, though now and 
then a street lamp betrayed her face to me, showed me her 
eyes — eyes bracketted on me, held wide in an impersonal 
stare, oriental in its fixity. 

At her house, we found Princess Boumistorf and other 
equivocal celebrities, all the medley that was wont to lounge 
into Madame Colbert’s boudoir in the small hours of the 
morning. These Bohemians and half-caste society folk fore- 
gathered, it was understood, in the cause of literature and in- 
cidentally to consume sandwiches washed down by a gen- 
erous flow of champagne. These were dissolute suppers. 
Not so much dissolute in a physical sense as intellectually 
corrupt. 

This night in particular, I remember how pretentiously 
vicious the talk was, redeemed only now and then by some 
witty saying. 

Prom where I sat, without craning forward, I could not 
see Marie-Therese; the heat was oppressive, the windows 
thrown wide, the sky from black kept flaring to flame, trans- 
fused with heat lightning. A fierce longing to take Marie- 
Therese away from this crowded table giddy with lights, 
out with me into the night, consumed me. I started as 
though she had read my thoughts when elbows on the cloth, 
bent forward between the candles, she called me by name. 
I had already risen to go and was shaking hands with Col- 
bert, that graciously mechanical host. “Leaving us so soon ?” 
she asked, and before I could answer her, “there is a 
draught,” she said looking over her shoulder in a hunted 
fashion. 

Within the last few minutes the air had vivified. A 
breath of wind was stirring, inclining the candle flames all 
one way. Marie-Therese shivered, she was a prey to spells 


118 


A WOMAN'S MAN 


of cold. Morphia chills, I think. I have seen her in tor- 
rid weather, her teeth chattering as with an ague. 

“Where is Gaspard ?" she asked referring to the servant. 
“Gaspard," she called. The man was out of hearing. I 
offered to shut the windows. “No, no, not those," she inter- 
posed impatiently, “I know where the draught comes from." 

The sequins on her skirt sparkled as she rose. She 
pushed back her chair with a twist of her thighs and passed 
out into the hall. 

Here I found her in ambush for me. She was making 
a pretence of closing the window and her outstretched arms 
showed preternaturally white. Each time the lightning 
broke over her, her tawny hair seemed to take fire, crowning 
her with flame. She heard my step and peered over her 
shoulder, for the hall was dimly lit, and she, blinded by 
staring out into the coming storm. As I drew nearer she 
recognised me. Her face took on a concentrated, cruel ex- 
pression, an expression of hers I remember well. I came to 
her and stood beside her. She said something, but so low 
that I did not understand her. I kept silent looking out at 
the park opposite that showed at moments as a black jumble, 
at others, in the flick of the lightning as a calcium garden 
sizzling with every shade of green. I did not ask what she 
had said, I felt the tenseness of the scene and was ashamed 
to say “What?" 

We neither of us spoke. I could hear her breathing, till 
abruptly, “A storm drives me mad," she panted, and took 
my hand. Her fingers were cold, they clutched mine spas- 
modically. She pressed my hand to her breast where her 
heart was hammering. The paroxysm that shook her, com- 
municated itself to me. In my arms she twisted close against 
me, turning her face to mine. Eor the first time, I kissed 
that ravenous mouth. 

I left the house like a drunken man. Under pretence 
of giving an order about the lighting of the hall, she had 
followed me down to the front door and casually, under 


A WOMAN'S MAN 


.119 

the smug eye of the valet, who was handing me my hat, 
she had said: “Really, I must see those notes of yours on 
your new book. As I come back from the Bois — about five, 
I’ll stop in at your place — some day this week perhaps — 
well, say to-morrow,” and she gave me a curt nod and went 
away coiling up a lock of hair that had shaken loose. 

The heat will be out of my body when I forget this night. 
I walked the streets, I felt it was a little of Paris, a little 
of the luxurious and cynical city that I had overcome in the 
woman I had left. 

The life of the artist is measured not by years, but by 
spans of emotion. As I hurried in the dark that night I 
hurried to maturity, going ahead blindly, unconscious of 
fatigue, time, place, — delirious, ecstatic. She was coming on 
the morrow to me. She had promised. 

I was on the Caulaincourt Bridge when I saw the sky 
pale, sickening for the dawn. I shall never forget that mo- 
ment, its eerie sweetness. A dredge was drifting on the 
Seine. The buildings had begun to take form in the light. 
The light of the day of days was increasing all about me — 
day of promise — day of completion when Paradise would 
come, feeling at the door of my room, knocking with the 
hands of a woman. 

The sunlight lay in a patch on my pillow before I went 
to bed. I had a short, broken sleep and woke to an entire 
revulsion of mood. After all, what had happened the night 
before was not entirely delightful. I opened my eyes to the 
drawbacks of a situation that had smacked of heaven some 
hours earlier. It was my poverty that trammelled me. I had 
not the money to be the amant en titre of such a woman. 
The flowers, the jewels, the gifts, that in self-respect I owed 
her — where would I get them ? 

Indeed, from the beginning, I found little happiness in 
this passion of mine. I could not give myself to it whole- 
heartedly, simply, as love requires. I was so kneaded with 
vanity and ferocious self-esteem. My habit of character 


120 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


analysis, inbred in the literary mind, asserted itself at this 
crisis. I was not so blindly infatuated as yet, nor so sunk 
under the spell of this woman that I could not see her as 
she was. I knew her to be as perverted as civilisation could 
make her and as brutally instinctive as nature herself. To 
think of this creature as capable of the tenderness and the 
ache at the heart that goes by the name of love was im- 
possible. You might as well picture a hyena a prey to senti- 
ment. 

I saw all this plainly enough then. Some instinct warned 
me to fight shy of this woman, who was to take the best years 
of my life, or rather my vanity prompted me not to compete 
with the other men who had loved her before me. What had 
I to hold her? She who had had for lovers the cleverest, 
the most depraved of Parisians. 

How impersonal her taste for me seemed. It was as 
though she were searching through me for some one else. 
I was for her the phantasy of a day. She had thought to 
take me up and to cast me aside when she pleased, but she 
was wrong there. She had made a mistake. The break 
would come from me. Before she had tired of me, I would 
throw her over, I swore it. 

Not very genial thoughts for a lover and they gnawed 
at me more or less all morning. I was tempted to confide 
in Ernest the turn my intrigue .had taken, but I had the 
delicacy to refrain. Later to be sure, I did tell him, but 
only with hints and half words that spared me a sense of 
actual disloyalty. 

As the day wore on, I worked myself into a fever. I 
explained to the concierge I was expecting a lady and he 
smiled as though he had second sight. He did not cease to 
smile all the time he was helping me tidy my room and hang 
a curtain before the washstand. I could have kicked him but 
instead, I gave him ten francs. 

Later I went out and bought a bottle of port and a box 
of biscuits. I had read some novels of fashionable life and 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


121 


was led to believe that this was the thing to do. I ranged 
the glasses and the cakes on my table with infinite care as 
though I meant them to form a geometrical figure. Then I 
stepped into the hall and came hack so as to get a first im- 
pression of my room. The sight of my hoots standing at at- 
tention under my wardrobe offended me. The tablecloth 
and counterpane my mother had worked were eye-sores. How 
orderly, hare, mediocre the room appeared. How unlike the 
sacred retreat of genius. This would never do. I threw 
some papers helter-skelter on the table as though the wind 
of inspiration had just blown across it. I took out of the 
wardrobe a brutal sketch of a woman, one of the art-students 
had given it me, and set it up on my mantel-piece, there it 
flaunted, flanked by the photographs of my mother and Ber- 
nardette. 

By the way, what a false note these were. I snatched 
up the picture of the impeccable old lady and this likeness 
of a palely smiling child and flung them into the drawer of 
my desk. 

Five o’clock — the clock of the University opposite was 
striking, assuring the time in its non-compromising, metallic 
voice. Five o’clock, yes and my watch said the same. My 
God, why was she not here? The vain subtleties that had 
fretted me were submerged in this one fearful possibility. 
If she were not to come ! If I were to reach so near and not 
have her. I went cold, every sound hurt me, for I could 
not long be deceived as to the step for which I waited. My 
God, the minutes were going by and all this time we might 
have been together. A passionate, painful longing racked me. 
See, the hands of the clock, were laid together now, praying 
the world to see it was half-past five. Let me die, but let 
her come to me. Let her be here before the quarter struck. 
And when I saw her standing in my doorway, looking at 
me deeply, a little out of breath, her skirt just shivering into 
immobility, I trembled all over and could not speak. 

She lifted her hand to her throat and uncoiled her boa. 


122 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


Her neck flashed into sight adorably nude. I saw her lips 
move without knowing what she said to me. I saw her wild 
and swooning smile and the glimmer of her teeth, pointed, 
feline. Her eyelids drooped, between her lashes, the blue- 
white of the eyeballs glinted. 


CHAPTER XXII 


“The things wherein there is no breath are bought at a most high 
price.” 


Ecclesiasticus. 


Since then I have seen, whence or where I cannot re- 
member, in some collection of old prints probably, the re- 
production of a painting after the Tuscan school. A strange 
and naive composition that conveyed much to me. In a 
turreted monastery edging their broad and anxious faces be- 
tween the window-bars, the monks of some very holy order 
have taken refuge while the seven cardinal sins grimacing 
with the heads of beasts, skirt the courtyard, howl against 
the towers and lay siege to the monastery. In their midst, 
Sensuality, a lean-flanked woman, strains and rears up her 
ravaged face of a panther. 

In this tense monster I recognised a fantastic resem- 
blance, a prehistoric caricature of my mistress — of Marie 
Therese. A flat head, ardent with tawny hair, a low-bridged 
nose and triangular face, these were hers, even to the eyes 
roving with a frantic sadness. 

It was in May when she stole first into my room, on a 
day no different from others, and I wish I had shut my 
door against her, for when she had pressed my clasped 
hands to the quick rise and fall of her breast and left me, 
there then began my bondage to jealousy, lies and torment — 
a9 well say my bondage to Marie-Therese. 

Loves’ fulfillment that habitually estranges the man while 
the woman clings to him the closer, had in our case the re- 
verse effect. It was I who with each successive meeting 
grew more and more abjectly hers. 

These were good years of mine I gave to Marie-Therese. 

123 


124 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


Much might have been done with them. She absorbed the 
best of my life. I do not remember a morning during the 
period of our liaison that I did not wake to this thought: 
“Will she see to-day the man she will prefer to me? Is it 
to-day I shall lose her?” For I had no confidence in her, 
no opinion of her constancy. I was always visualising her, 
spying on her in my thoughts. It is to be in hell, to be un- 
certain of the one you love. How study, how lose yourself 
in creative work when your mind is another’s, when a woman 
has your brain? 

I had moments when I wanted to break with her. I felt 
the price I was paying was too high even for the delirious 
hours she gave me. My life was going by, my work was at 
a standstill, my imagination stultified, and I drifting after 
Marie-Therese, without initiative, without ambition. I had 
grown to be just a thing to follow her, haunt her and be reas- 
sured. It was as though I had tied myself to the skirts of this 
woman who would shake me off when her fancy prompted; 
for I knew, I had known from the beginning, that in her 
heart she cared nothing for me. I did not mind at first, it 
was by the senses she had fastened on me, and I felt at first 
no need to idealise her. But when I grew entirely hers, giv- 
ing her what possibilities of tenderness and affection I had, 
I began to suffer. I learned a contempt of myself. Here 
was I wallowing in sentiment, cringing after this woman, 
bleating, “Do you love me?” “You don’t love me.” “Why 
won’t you tell me yes or no ?” And so on through the whole 
litany of the humble and anxious lover. 

Grotesque as it may seem, she never answered me di- 
rectly, not even when she was in my arms, but would put 
me off with, “Well, what do you think?” or “Doesn’t it 
seem like it?” or “Could I give you a better proof?” or 
“Would I be here if I didn’t?” looking away from me all the 
while with an harassed, evasive smile. It was as though this 
vicious being, nevertheless, respected the word “love,” hesi- 
tated to apply it to what she felt for me, was ashamed to 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


125 


take its name in vain. She, too, like other women, had 
her unaccountable reticences, her farcical pruderies, the 
obstinate secrecy of her sex, and never, even in our closest 
moments, did she betray her inner thought. The oftener 
we met the less I understood her. The more passion I 
squandered on her, the less distinctly I read in her heart. I 
have learnt since then that every man has his sphinx, — the 
woman he loves. It is his passion for her, not her sex that 
makes her a mystery to him for no woman is an enigma 
to the man who does not care for her. 

Marie-Therese’s every word, revealing to some degree 
her real, her secret self, was dear to me. Often her turn 
of phrase haunted me like a leit motif and always, as once 
when she named her favourite colour, and again, another 
time, when she spoke of the flower she liked best, her pref- 
erences seemed to me full of an intense, mysterious meaning. 
Why, to me, her choice of perfume was in itself an ecstatic 
problem. Always I strained after a deeper knowledge of 
her, trying to realise the enigma of her being, to reach her 
heart’s core and in vain, for always — yes, even in love’s 
profoundest moments, I felt her woman’s soul elude me, 
melt out of my ken, slip behind the veils of Isis. 

It was in the Rue du Marais that I ultimately found a 
meeting-place for us. Here I rented a little apartment oppo- 
site the Hotel Lamoignon, that quaint old house built by 
Diana of France, and carved with emblems of the chase, 
with hunting-horns, with crescents and with the heads of 
stags and hounds that peered at us from across the street. 
To scrape together the money to do this, I had had to send 
off home to my mother, pretexting copyright expenses. 

Every evening now I wrote to my mistress. My hand 
was well known to Colbert and I thought it safer to direct 
the envelopes “Poste Restante, M. T. A. de V.” for I had 
imagined the childish conceit of making a monogram of our 
combined initials and so addressing to her my correspond- 


126 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


ence. By the way, I wish I could get hold of those letters 
again. There was some good literature in them. 

When Marie-Therese had planned out her week, she 
would answer me briefly announcing the hour of our next 
rendezvous, enumerating the social functions where I would 
he likely to meet her. She wrote in haste making use of 
abbreviations and set terms with the dry precision of a busi- 
ness man, yet I read these arid notes and re-read them trying 
to And something in them beyond statements, some human 
phrase, some bit the heart had dictated. 

In these days I was abjectly, imbecilely in love. For 
me every second ticked to the name of Marie-Therese. I 
would come to our meeting-place before the time appointed 
so as to wait for her, to savour her coming. 

I shall never forget our room, it was furnished in a staid, 
old-fashioned style and seemed full of decorous memories. 
The chairs kept their backs against the wall, the table-cloth 
hung discreetly to the floor, the window curtains stood stiff 
with conventual rigidity, only the alcove clock gave a hint 
that lovers might have lurked here before. It represented 
time asleep, watched over by love. And indeed, it was as 
though time had forgotten this retreat of ours, so removed 
did our room seem from the grip, the hurry of the world. 

A monastic lull, I remember, pervaded the Rue du 
Marais. Sometimes the only sound through the still after- 
noon was the rattle of the fiacre that brought Marie-Therese. 
She always left her own carriage before the Louvre, or the 
Bon Marche, or some other shop, and going in by one entrance 
slipped out at another and came to me. Indeed we played 
the game of intrigue with all the classical Parisian tricks, 
even to the thick veil, the bribed concierge, all the rest of it 

When I heard the rush of her skirt on the stairs, I would 
take the two brass tassels that served as pulleys to the win- 
dow curtain, and drawing them together, shut out the light. 
Into the semi-dark she would glide redolent of out-doors, 
of summer, fragrant with sunshine or fresh with rain. I 


A WOMAN’S MAN- 


127 


would hold her to me avariciously and in our first kiss all 
the sensibility of my body seemed to concentrate in my lips. 

For four years I shadowed this woman, I was her lover — • 
her happy lover I suppose I should say, for in all that time, 
so far as I know, she never deceived me. I was her happy 
lover then if the obsession of jealousy and disgust, if the 
melancholy of gratified appetite and an intermittent ache 
in the breast where we picture the heart to he, make for 
happiness. 

My story is that of many a young man who has loved 
a woman no longer young, hut versed in the lore of the 
senses, depraved to the core years before ever she met him, 
rotten right through from maidenhood perhaps, for the 
courtesan is horn, not made. Marie^Therese taught me the 
subtleties of what I called love then. Its surprises, its 
delirium and I served as her apprentice. 

For four years I never left Paris except to sneak off 
to Trouville and once to d’Eauville in Marie-Therese’s 
track. Gradually I broke with my mother. Never in all 
this time did I return to Tours. I could not bring myself 
to travel away from my mistress, to leave her if only for 
the two days a flying visit to my mother would require. 
Why ? Did I have a morbid idea that if I ceased to spy on 
Marie-Therese, if I turned my back on her long enough to 
take a journey, I should lose her? I think I had some 
such notion. Also I can plead another, a more complex 
reason. I have never been able to keep two women in my 
heart simultaneously however opposite the order of love I 
bear them. One forces the other from my thoughts. I was 
serving under another tyrant now and the memory of my 
mother’s reign was unbearable. I ceased even to write to 
her. 

I did not need to ask for funds any more. I was mak- 
ing enough money to keep me afloat — I had taken to writ- 
ing for feuilletons, cheap love-poems, melodramatic garbage; 
my fine artistic conscience was come to this. I knew the 


128 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


stuff was poor, I knew I was prostituting my talent, but 
what of that? What did it matter how these francs were 
earned if they sufficed to buy a pendant for Marie-Therese. 
I had to make money. 

I will do myself the justice to say that I never meant 
the breach between my mother and myself to be definite. 
Our estrangement had come about inadvertently and in spite 
of me, I thought. Regularly, every two or three months, 
I promised myself to go to my mother, to wheedle her into 
good humour. But always I kept putting off the visit that 
was to make all right between us. 

Towards the end of the second June after I had left 
home for good, I received a parcel from Tours and on 
opening it, I saw the engagement ring I had given Ber- 
nardette and some pitiful little trifles — presents of mine to 
her during our childhood. I found a letter as well. Our 
common people have a saying in Trance, I have heard 
Yvonne quote it, that in a love quarrel or a separation, it 
is best to write, for then, “the paper bears the pain.” 

I decided Bernardette had not suffered. Her words 
were so delicate, so courteously chosen. There was not a 
comma forgotten and she signed her name with a very im- 
posing capital, an ornate careful “B.” God forgive me, I, 
the psychologist as I thought, a reader of human hearts and 
I could not. even guess that the first copy of this letter had 
been written otherwise and blotted with tears. I could not 
feel the regret, the pleading, hear the call of a young life 
in these lines of good-bye. 

I answered Bernardette that I owed her an entire sin- 
cerity. It was true as she suggested — we had drifted apart. 
I should be doing her an injustice if I still held her bound 
to me, so our engagement must come to an end, and I fin- 
ished up with some flat protestations of friendship. 

She answered me, assuring me she would be glad if we 
were friends. I wrote back and thanked her. We ex- 
changed no more letters. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


“Who will pity a charmer who is bitten by a serpent.” 

Ecclesiasticus . 

My mistress had one secret that for all her stubborn 
reticence she could not keep. It was her dread of age, her 
fear of wrinkles and grey hairs. To the woman of her kind, 
to the materialist such as Marie-Therese whose life is hound- 
ed by the bed, the cup and the platter, this is the tragedy, 
this growing old. I saw the fear in her eyes when she 
paused before the glass. I saw her wince when too much 
sunlight flooded her. She never confided in me directly, 
no, hut she betrayed herself. Only to hear her say, “Ah, 
hut you are young” ... or, “You’re a hoy still,” or “If 
you were my age,” was to guess at the ulcer in her heart. 

Even when she put her arms about me, I felt she was look- 
ing in me for something she, herself, had lost — youth gone 
for her irrevocably. Youth! — how she said the word — as a 
woman speaks the name of her lover — lost and regretted. 
Youth! why she told me often that it was the only quality 
attracted her under the sun. The only thing adorable, ador- 
able in its very silliness, in its mistakes, in the thrilling 
imbecility of its laugh. j 

I remember one day when her fear of the future, when 
her dread of the years came home to me as never before. It 
was in one of the interludes of our passion. We were sitting 
on the sofa together, lulled in a sort of trance. The Vene- 
tian blinds were drawn, stemming the glare from the street, 
a diffused green light flooded our room as though we were 
deep in a submerged land. In the glass of the wardrobe op- 
posite, our reflection showed eerily pale, two phantom faces 
leaning together about to kiss as they faded. It was I who 

129 


130 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


looked up and she who bent over me for she was somewhat 
the taller of us two. I rested my head on her breast while 
in the stillness our clock kept up its muffled heat, throbbing 
like a heart. So I lay relaxed, lulled in this tender seeming 
intimacy. I smiled at our reflection and she, following my 
glance, saw in the glass her pale head drooping over mine. 
She winced and shaking loose of me sprang to the wardrobe, 
tore it open. 

“I cannot look at us together,” she said, “I cannot see my 
face by yours.” She came back to me with a dragging step. 
Behind her gaped the open wardrobe showing its empty 
shelves lined with newspaper. 

“You make me feel old, old.” 

It was the first time I ever heard her say the word and 
mean it. I can give no idea of how she spoke it. It was 
like the fugue of a minor scale. She was standing, I sitting 
and she had drawn my head against her body. 

“Oh, God! how old,” she said again. Her voice was 
growling, anguished, the voice of her flesh, her flesh that had 
ruled her always and tormented her now. 

The ardent and melancholy woman who stole to me here 
in the Hue du Marais was opposed to the Marie-Therese 
the world knew. Her face as I had seen it, had no expres- 
sion in common with the social mask she wore. At the func- 
tions to which I tracked her — yes, tracked is the word, for 
my life was given up to following her, to keeping near her, 
— when she passed me with her friends, laughing, extrava- 
gantly dressed, absorbed in the futile moment, I could not 
believe she was my mistress. She would throw me a word of 
recognition and seem to forget me even as she swept by, fan- 
ning herself the while with a fan worth more than I could 
make in a year. 

I found it difficult to approach her in society. She was 
hedged round by celebrities, by statesmen with orders bar- 
ring their chests. Nor did she encourage me to seek her in 
company. I was her secret vice, a nonentity to whom per- 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


131 


versely she had taken a fancy, a provincial hoy, a lover of no 
account of whom she was a little ashamed. In public her 
manner conveyed her independence of me, her cool, ironical 
smile, her cavalier hand-shake, seemed to say, “You can 
never have any place in my life really.” So she would meet 
me entrenched among her friends, among the people of her 
set. I hated her then, I was fired with resentment against 
her, with a sense of burning injury. 

In self-respect I should have been done with her, or 
taken her for what she was, a flippant acquaintance and in- 
comparable mistress. I should, at any rate, have kept some 
hours free for my work instead of spying after her, instead 
of suffering. But no, I could not break with her, I was 
servilely hers. I had for her more than passion, I can give 
no idea of what 1 felt for her. By what name can I call it — 
insensate love? clamouring of the blood? unholy subjection 
to sex ? There is no word in our language can express it. I 
was permeated by her and led the lonely, absorbed life of 
the monomaniac, without tastes, without friends. 

Ernest and I had drifted apart. I hardly ever saw him 
now. He was forging ahead in his profession. He had 
served his time at the Medical Institute, he had passed his 
examinations, and with a view to going back to Tours to 
practice, he had assumed spectacles and an unctuous bedside 
manner. At heart he was the same rogue though, cunning 
and unscrupulous, consumed by a furious appetite for plea- 
sure. So as not to lose his mistress, he had married her — 
as the saying goes, he had made an honest woman of her, 
before he took her home to Tours. 

Bosalie was an exceptionally plain person to my taste, 
stupid, too, I should have thought. Often as I looked into her 
shallow face where the flat nose lay in embryo between the 
cheeks, I wondered how she had managed to circumvent that 
born fortune-hunter, the wily Ernest. Like many women of 
her class, she longed to pass for p conventional and virtuous 
bourgeoise. She supervised her manners and her language, 


132 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


she rarely slipped into the slang or gave way to the im- 
promptu effusions that are the charm of these creatures of 
the gutter. She wore an air of new-found cleanliness, she 
affected a refined pallor and powdered her face, even her 
mouth so thick that at the corners of her lips, I remember 
when she talked, there formed a sort of white crust. I won- 
dered what Ernest saw in her. He seemed bewitched and 
I marvelled at him, yet I, of all men, had least cause to he 
astonished at such infatuation. 

Once or twice during these years, I went for a walk with 
Ernest. We got as far as Versailles or Meudon, striding on, 
to the tune of some interminable discussion, as in the past. 
But somehow our jaunts were not a success, we were no 
longer congenial, we had drifted apart. Ernest now was a 
smug practitioner on the high road to success, while I was 
only the artist of whom his friends say, “I used to think him 
very promising.” Intercourse with Ernest was painful to 
me now. He reminded me of lost ideals, of the fervent love 
for art that had fired me in Tours. He evoked the literary 
Crusader I once was — ardent, devout, starting for Paris as 
for the Holy Land. 

Only very occasionally now, I heard the divine call of 
art. I was too overworked for self-expression, too badgered 
by necessity. I had no time. Besides my journalism, be- 
sides the novelettes that I reeled off by the ream, every day 
I drudged two hours for the Princess Roumistorf. She had 
engaged me as her secretary, my business was to copy out 
some poems of hers, to transcribe from rough drafts for 
Colbert, her publisher. She wanted to put her literary work 
straight before she set out for Africa on a long pending ex- 
pedition. For three years there had been talk of this journey 
and now finally the date was settled. The end of May was 
the appointed time. 

In her study, a smoke-saturated room, austerely fur- 
nished as is a man’s office, the Princess striding up and down, 
jarring the windows with her step, dictated to me the verses 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


133 


I could not decipher. I shall never forget the ambiguous 
figure she looked. Her befrogged dressing-gown seemed to 
call for Hessian hoots, a cigarette wobbled between her lips 
while she shouted descriptions of spring, rhapsodies on love, 
in a voice hoarse as a sergeant’s at drill. 

In spite of her grating utterance, her uncouth diction, 
at moments I would pause, pen in hand, surprised, touched 
into immobility. To myself I would say, “Why, I, too, have 
felt this.” And gradually this parody of a woman grew to 
he for me the mouth-piece of beauty. She gave a voice, she 
found words for what I had believed only heart-beats could 
express. I envied her her genius. Often I caught myself 
thinking, “If only I had written this.” 


CHAPTER XXIV 
“Neglect not the gift that is in thee." 

Timothy J. 

The first Erench expedition to Central Africa took place 
in May, 1885. A disastrous affair, it may be remembered, 
that made a stir in its time. The exploring party was headed 
by the Princess Eoumistorf, a scientist called Legrand and 
two members of the Explorers* Club whose names I have for- 
gotten. 

The day of the start, I found a crowd, collected round the 
Princess’s door, made up of journalists, men with cameras, 
the curious hoi-polloi standing on tip-toe, waiting to escort 
her to the station. As I passed into the house — I had come to 
say good-bye and to take charge of the Princess’s last poems, 
unpublished as yet — I caught murmurs of “He’s going too,” 
“He must be one of them,” “Give him a cheer,” “Bravo.” 
And a mistaken whoop went up in my honour. Love of 
notoriety was so in-bred in me that I remember I tingled 
with gratified vanity. 

I found the house dismantled, the walls bare of photo- 
graphs, the carpet ripped off the stairs. I hardly knew the 
study in the glare from the curtainless windows. The Rou- 
mistorf supervised her valet — he was cording up some boxes 
crammed with books — while a maid-servant having piled the 
photographs and knick-knacks on the centre table, was now 
busy packing them in a chest. The girl kept grimacing to 
keep back her tears, for the Princess was much loved by 
those who served her. 

The Eoumistorf lost no time in greeting me, but instantly 
handed over to me the manuscript of her last work, warning 
me that this was her only copy. My responsible manner 

134 


A WOMAN’S MAN- 


135 


must have reassured her for it was with reverence that I 
accepted the charge of these poems, of these masterpieces, 
which neither critic nor publisher had seen, indeed which 
no one hut myself had yet read. 

“I’ve tried to write legibly,” she said, “copy this as soon 
as you can and make good terms with Colbert for me. He 
ought to he generous for this will come as a surprise to him. 
He is not expecting any work from me and won’t have time 
to bargain.” 

I promised to do my best. Just then — “Is there nothing 
here that Madame la Princesse cares to take?” questioned 
the maid, pointing to the helittered table. 

The Princess glanced through the medley, turning over 
the hooks and pictures. “No, nothing, Sophie,” and beckon- 
ing to me, “de Vaucourt,” she said, “here is something that 
will interest you.” 

It was a photograph the Poumistorf put into my hand. 
My heart missed a beat, never could I mistake the face. 

After a pause, “It is like her,” I said, “only it must have 
been taken when she — well, some time ago, I mean.” 

Face to face with this hit of cardboard, I felt drained of 
breath, as indeed I always did when, inadvertently, I met 
Marie-Therese. 

“There you have her when first I knew her. Ho you find 
her changed, Armand? See, the eyes are the same.” And 
the Princess slipped her arm through mine and led me out 
of hearing of the servants into the embrasure of the window. 
Here for a moment, we both stood silent — I brooding over the 
picture I still held. 

I know no such disturbing conundrum as an early photo- 
graph of the face you love. Here are her eyes before ever 
they met yours, and her mouth smiling, knowing nothing of 
you, an imprint from her past is on the cardboard — that past 
in which you can never have a part, which you can never 
claim nor solve. 

Avidly, in the sunlight, I bent over the picture studying 


136 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


the enigma it presented. I felt the Princess eying me. No 
doubt she knew of my relations with Marie-Therese. Indeed, 
I sometimes wondered if my strange mistress had not con- 
fided to her our story, for whenever Madame Colbert’s name 
was mentioned, the Roumistorf kept for me a quizzical and 
disconcerting stare. Now under her insistent glance, I 
handed her hack the photograph. With an assumption of 
indifference, “It is an interesting face,” I said, “in its way.” 

“I should not advise any one to grow too fond of it.” 

“Why ?” I asked, still in the casual key. “Do you think 
Madame Colbert — heartless ?” 

“No, only her heart and her senses are independent of 
each other.” 

Like one who bears a grievance, I burst out with, “You 
mean she is incapable of love in the best sense ?” 

“I mean that love, as she understands it, has none of the 
elements of affection. She has no tenderness in matters of 
sex. She has none of the slavish craving to humiliate herself 
for one man, to attach, devote herself to him, to keep herself 
for him. Her passion, unlike the normal woman’s, is with- 
out gratitude. She has an intrigue, well and good, but the 
fact does not endear her partner to her, any more than a 
refreshing drink makes especially precious to her the cup 
from which she drank.” 

I can give no idea of the Roumistorf’s tone towards the 
close of this speech. As always when she discussed women, 
she seemed to owe her sex a grudge. She spoke of everything 
feminine with a sort of flinching as might a misanthrope, 
too often jilted, deceived and ridiculed. 

Now after a pause she said, “Have you ever wondered” — 
she was still scrutinising the photograph — “why such things 
as poisoned ivy exist and deadly toadstools and the tarantula 
whose sting drives mad, and such women as Marie-Therese? 
— women innately, instinctively harmful,” and looking at me 
directly, “harmful to youth, to idealism, to the artist.” 

“Why to the artist especially ?” 


137 


A WOMAN’S MAN 

“Because the completion of the artist is through love, re- 
ciprocated love. The artist is made by the woman who loves 
him. She may he ignorant, tongue-tied, dumb to beauty, but 
if she loves whole-heartedly enough, she will teach her lover 
all he will ever learn of his art. This sounds like sentimental 
cant to you. You’ll find out some day that a woman, when 
she is loved by you and loves you, knows how to say even 
‘Good-bye, I’ll see you to-morrow’ in such words as to set 
your brain ringing with poetry all night. Why? Because 
what she says rings true. She speaks from the heart. Now 
Marie-Therese avoids sentiment, she disregards all that sets 
inspiration pulsing in a man. I wager she has stultified as 
much talent as any woman in Paris. I should be sorry to see 
a young fellow whom I believed had work to do wasted on 
a materialist of her sort.” 

Looking obstinately away out of window, I asked, “How 
would you advise him to forget her, to get free of her? I 
suppose it might help him to remember she is no longer 
young?” 

“No, for the more a passion partakes of the monstrous, 
the abnormal, the ridiculous even, the more tenacious root it 
has. The Greeks knew this. Their great love-drama, what 
is it? Phedra’s story. Yes, we love in spite of, not because 
of — but I had something to say to you, Armand — what was 
it now — ah, I remember, I wanted to tell you to work. There 
is good stuff in that brain of yours, it is going to waste, what 
you need is some one to bring the best out of you — a woman 
who believes in you. Your affair is a wife, the right wife 
necessarily, to keep you to regular hours and a healthy diet, 
to give you a home to provide for and to be proud of. If you 
had a wife and children, you would find yourself. You are 
no Bandelaire, my poor boy, no Bacchic genius, you will 
never create masterpieces on alcohol and the aphrodisiac 
regime. By the way, is it true what Madame Colbert tells 
me, that in your town, Toulouse — Tours, there is a young girl 
with all the virtues and a dot waiting to be made Madame de 


138 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


Vaucourt, what? eh? Marry her then, you could not do bet- 
ter. Your taste for her will come hack soon enough once 
Paris is out of your blood.” 

“I am not a marrying man.” 

“Pshaw, marriage will not hurt your genius, it did not 
hurt Dante’s, he had a wife, so had most of the great men 
of the Middle Ages. They were all married except Michael 
Angelo and a very few others, mostly monks. The best work 
is done in the solidarity of family life.” 

We had turned from the window by now and carelessly 
the Poumistorf slung away my mistress’s photograph. It 
landed face downward. I remember I winced as I heard it 
slap on to the table. I wanted to ask for the picture, but I 
could not bring myself to do so. 

Some two hours later, the Princess started for Marseilles 
where she was to take ship for Beira. I offered to accom- 
pany her to the station, hut as her servants were storing the 
furniture, she told me to wait and make sure all was in order 
before the concierge locked the house. 

She had taken me by both hands to say good-bye, her 
eyes, small and glowering as a mastiff’s, looked me up, then 
down, gauging my weakness, weighing my possibilities. “Any 
gift means a responsibility. Your talent is given you in 
trust, remember that. Put your work first and good luck.” 
She spoke with a bracing roughness, a salutary pity. “Good 
luck, dear boy,” she said again. 

I felt I was losing some one who believed in me, who 
might have made something of me. With real regret, I saw her 
turn her square shoulders on me. I knew I had lost a friend. 


CHAPTER XXV 


“He went not as other times to seek enchantment but he set his face 
towards the wilderness.” 


Numbers. 


It was late in the afternoon before I was free to go home 
carrying the manuscript the Ronmistorf had intrusted to 
me. Already the gas flared, street after street hurst into 
light, the trail of fire stretched — spread, the lamps seemed 
ignited by a flying spark, by an ember blown through the 
city, floating in the warm, May wind. 

I felt lighter of heart, I remember, than I had since many 
a day. The excitement of resolve fired me. I thrilled with 
the thought, “I am going to make a fresh start,” ambition 
stirred in me again — thanks to the Princess, for finally in 
our farewell talk, she had forced me to realise my mental 
decadence. She had opened my eyes at last to the time I 
had lost, to the talent I had wasted in Marie-Therese’s ser- 
vice. Eor the present I was a failure, a good-for-nothing — 
in a way, to face the fact, was stimulating. It meant a step 
towards conversion. After all I was young, there was hope. 
My brain might wake and teem with fancies. I might ride 
yet again on the wings of inspiration. To-day I determined 
should mark an epoch in my life, a change for the better. I 
vowed to myself to wipe away the memory of these last years, 
to begin all over again as though I had just set foot in Paris. 
My decision was irrevocable — I swore it. 

I would be done with the unrest that goes by the name of 
love. Done with the long evenings spent prying after Mario* 
Therese, trying to keep her faithful by pitifully tracking in 
the wake of her train. Done with the hours passed brooding 
over our last interview, mulling over her words, her looks, 

139 


140 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


hoping to read into them a little feeling, a little sincerity. 
Done with idealising, done with all but caressing her, for no, 
I could not bring myself to forego her entirely. I was de- 
pendent on the poignant moments she chose to accord me. 
What might I not learn in her arms of the surprises and 
ingenuities of passion? Cynical as a Mussulman, I deter- 
mined to accept the fact that there was no truth in my mis- 
tress, that a woman has no soul. I would ask of Marie- 
Therese no more than I knew she could give. When absent 
from her, she should cease to exist for me. The thought of 
her, I promised myself, should no longer paralyse my will, 
absorb my energies, poison my brain. I would keep my intel- 
lectual freedom, I would leave my mark on art. 

So I philosophized and all because a woman I admired 
had disparaged the woman I loved. These women! — be- 
tween them I was like a shuttlecock hatted from one to the 
other. 

For this very night I had engaged a stall at the Palais 
Royale. Madame Colbert was coming there with a box party. 
I should be in the same theatre with her and able to get a 
sight of her — that is, if I chose to go. For after all why 
should I spend the evening craning up at Marie-Therese, 
twisting my neck only to see her whispering with her guests, 
laughing at me perhaps, exhibiting me to her friends, point- 
ing me out where I sat, faithfully watching her through my 
opera-glasses ? I was more inclined to stay at home to work, 
As I neared my lodging — no, I decided, I would not go 
either to the theatre or to the restaurant where Marie-The- 
rese had asked me to join her at supper after the play. In 
so informal a party, she would not miss me and if she did, 
why then I meant more to her than I believed. 

A golden disc stained the ceiling above my lighted lamp. 
In the warm glow, my coffee-service glittered genially. Some- 
how the whole room seemed to promise sweet, studious hours. 
For the first time I felt I could write here, without absinthe,, 
from the heart. I drew the curtains, locked away the Rou- 


141 


A WOMANS MAN 

mistorf’s manuscript, opened a pad, sharpened a pencil and 
sat down throbbing with the imperative need of self-expres- 
sion. 

Through the open window sounded the hum of Paris. 
The stir of the indifferent city, all unconscious of me yet. 
But I would conquer it, I would force it to acknowledge my 
talent. I was free now, to-night I had declared my indepen- 
dence. I had broken an engagement with Marie-Therese. 
For the first time, I had failed her. 

I amused myself by imagining how she would take it. I 
could see her opening wide her hard, shallow eyes and say- 
ing, “How does it happen that Armand is not here to-night V 7 
Unless absorbed in some one else, she never noticed my ab- 
sence. Somehow this thought disturbed me, for a hit, though, 
after all, what did I care ? What were to me the moods, the 
caprices of a perverse, dishonest woman ? 

Still, what a relief it must be to believe in her you love, 
to rely on her, to trust her, and imperceptibly my thoughts 
drifted to the other women who had affected my life — to 
Marianne, to my mother and to the little girl I had once 
meant to marry. 

Perhaps if I went home now, I should find Bernardette 
engaged. In every letter, my mother never failed to write 
of Mademoiselle Anselme’s many suitors. Well, I only 
hoped some honest fellow might get her. I did not want to 
think of this sensitive child handed over to a drunkard or a 
fortune-hunter. She was meant for happiness, her face 
showed it. And I remembered her endearing, pretty ways. 
A mannerism of hers always pleased me. She had a trick, 
when she was touched by good or bad news, appealed to or 
much moved, of pressing her hands to her heart as though to 
suppress its throbbing. What made her heart heat now, I 
wondered. Did she love some one ? Somehow I did not think 
she had forgotten me entirely. It might he that this child 
who knew nothing could re-teach me what love is really. Love 
I had degraded and forgotten in a corrupt woman’s arms. 


142 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


I had heard often and implicitly believed that an artist 
only grows through heart-felt experiences. It would he a 
strange thing, a new, a wonderful experiment to learn what 
a girl’s love might be, what innocence was like and youth and 
virginal tenderness. 


CHAPTER XXYI 


“Give me any plague but the plague of the heart and any wickedness 
but the wickedness of a woman.” 


Ecclesiasticus. 


The evening wore on, but my work did not keep pace with 
the hours. I could not write as I had hoped. Perhaps I 
missed the stimulus of absinthe. Perhaps it was the clock 
that hampered me. Opposite on the mantel-piece, it stared 
me out of countenance. I had but to raise my eyes to know 
it was eight o’clock. The doors of the theatre were open. 
Eight-fifteen — why, the curtain had risen. Eight-thirty — oh, 
this would never do. 

Irritated I turned the clock’s face to the wall, but still 
the time-piece haunted me, ticking to my thoughts. “The 
first act is playing now,” it seemed to insinuate. She is 
expecting you still, she has glanced over the stalls and thinks, 
“Armand is late.” 

“Pshaw, she never thinks of me.” I spoke aloud trying 
to shake free of my obsession, and pressing my hands to my 
temples, I bent over the blank page before me. 

Tick, tick, tick, went the clock, as much as to say, “The 
entr’acte now. She has turned those lovely bare shoulders 
of hers on the house, her fan is swaying to and fro, and in 
its scented breeze, the hair in the nape of her neck is stir- 
ring. She is smiling into the dark recess of the box, talking 
with her guests. Who are they to-night, I wonder?” and I 
wrote “Chapter I” very carefully. 

Tick, tick, tick, tick. Hine struck. The chime was not 
like that of our clock in the Rue du Marais. The latter 
played a little tune every hour and though the melody was 
always the same, it seemed to vary, for sometimes it meant 

143 


144 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


“She is coming,” and sometimes it meant, “You must part.” 
That was a pretty clock — Marie-Therese’s and mine. Time 
asleep watched over by love. I would know the tick of its 
pendulum among a thousand, and I broke my pencil point 
and had to sharpen it. 

Surely the night must be well on by now, the theatre was 
over perhaps. I rather wished I had seen the play. I had 
heard it discussed and the heroine had made me think of 
Marie-Therese. At the theatre when I was reminded of her, 
or when the actors spoke of love, I would look insistently to- 
wards my mistress, and if by chance her glance met mine, I 
experienced a delicious sensation as though our thoughts had 
joined each other and mingled together. 

I sighed, fidgeted, got up and turned the clock about. 
Just as I thought — close on midnight. By now Marie- 
Therese was driving towards the Maison Doree, the restau- 
rant where I had agreed to sup with her. She would have 
ordered my place to be laid, she would certainly be surprised 
not to find me waiting to join her party. In common polite- 
ness I must send her a line of excuse. Should I write word 
I was ill ? Surely I ought to offer some explanation. I was 
not a crazy Bohemian without manners. I must not fail in 
courtesy to any woman. It was against my will, to be sure, 
but I must not overlook the fundamental rules of politeness. 
In this affair there should be no wrongs on my side. 

I was dressed to go before I had ultimately determined 
whether I would go or no. I thought it probable I should 
not. I was quite ready, but I loitered. I looked in the glass, 
then I knew that, after all, I had decided, I was going, my 
face told me so, so I took up my hat and went. 

One must be a little drunk to enter into the spirit of a 
cabaret. As I came into the Maison Doree, half ashamed of 
myself for coming, hungry, tired of wrestling with the ideal, 
I saw as never before the tarnish on the mirrors, the stains 
on the upholstery, the paint on the women and smelt the spilt 
food. The music brayed, the human voices brayed louder. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


145 


In the centre of the room a fat woman, strangled in sequins, 
danced the danse du ventre . The men watched her. Her 
contortions pleased their dizzied senses, hut to me her gyra- 
tions were insanely sad. I could see under her frizzed hair 
her eyes, shifting from side to side, noting the tables she had 
not begged from yet, while all the time her body never forgot 
to wobble, to and fro she swayed, forward and back, with the 
frantic melancholy of a caged bear. 

Often on entering a room I had felt Marie-Therese’s pres- 
ence, had blindly known she was there, known it from a sud- 
den leap of my pulse. To-night without having seen her, I 
made straight for her. 

I had come to the Maison Doree, fermenting with ill- 
feeling against her, fretted with hurt vanity, bristling with 
the pride of a very young man who knows himself unsuccess- 
ful, embittered and shy. But once more as I took her hand, 
as I felt the pressure of her fingers and the shifting of her 
palm against mine, my grievances ebbed away. I was com- 
forted, reassured. No, thought I, with a lover’s self-decep- 
tion, his divine naivete, she cannot be what I know she is — 
corrupt to the heart, rotten right through, since I love her so. 

I bent over her hand and kissed it. The motion she made 
to greet me set the laces at her breast stirring. Her skirt 
rustled, and gave out the scent that permeated her. I stood 
before her, a little breathless as though I had come to her 
running, demoralised, glad to give in at last. My weakness 
for her was incurable. I knew it now. Always I should suf- 
fer through her and be subject to her and I could find no 
excuse but this — no, no one else is like her. 

While I was excusing myself for being late, Madame 
Colbert kept looking up into my face. At moments, her eye- 
lashes charged with charcoal, flickered over her dilated pu- 
pils, while she smiled almost arrogantly as though to say, “I 
knew you would come.” 

Lit by the glint of the eyes, by the chilly glimmer of the 
teeth, what an impassive, hard face it was, what a cruel, 


146 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


heathen goddess she looked! Only her diamond earrings 
seemed full of sensibility as they trembled against the oval 
of her cheeks. 

“So, if you will let me take a cup of coffee with you . . .’* 
I concluded in a murmur. 

Without a word she motioned me to a chair, and as she 
turned to the man next her, I heard for the first time that 
evening her disconcerting voice, deep as a Valkyrie’s, ring out 
through the gabble of the other women, through their bird- 
like twitter. 

She was telling of what she chose to call the Roumis- 
torf’s penchant for me. She made quite a funny story of my 
intimacy with the Princess. 

“Poor de Vaucourt,” she remarked, “he will be able to 
call his soul his own now that his female gendarme is out of 
France. You should hear her order him about, she swears 
at him like a corporal. After every sentence, I expect her to 
tug at her upper lip. Perhaps she will grow a moustache in 
Africa. Ha, ha, if she does, Armand will be jealous of her. 
He is trying to cultivate one himself.” And the easy laugh 
induced by champagne and light company went round the 
table. 

Monsieur Colbert, that negligible husband and provider 
of the feast, was not present. I alone represented Bohemia. 
I was not of the same world (is these party folk, these people 
of leisure. I could not laugh their loud, inane laugh, not at 
any rate when I was sober. 

Sulkily I filled my wine-glass and bent over my plate. 
From under my brows, I watched Marie-Therese. It was a 
satisfaction to me to think that she might play the society 
hostess, drape her shoulders with tulle, hide as much of her 
body as she chose. She was mine, she could not change the 
fact that she belonged to me as much as to any man. 

I felt her to be moody to-night — spasmodic, tyrannical. 
One moment she talked down her guests, the next a sudden 
languor overcame her, her eyelids drooped, she glanced side- 


A WOMANS MAN 


147 


ways while her expression softened to something wistful, al- 
most infantile. Her lips trembled and she forgot to go on 
talking. 

I followed her covert looks and saw at a side-table a group 
of officers in their bright uniforms, laughing together, having 
a wager over a magnum of champagne. These men were 
strangers to me, all of them, or so I thought at first. 

The chill, inhospitable dawn broke up the party. The 
morning filtered through the scarlet window curtains till they 
sickened to orange. The women hurried on their wraps, hid 
their faces in their boas as though shy of the light. The mu- 
sicians hooded their instruments, the waiters waved crumpled 
napkins and Madame Colbert’s guests ran for their carriages 
as though surprised, routed by the sun. 

While her friends filed by, I had stood behind her chair. 
I had hoped to get a word with her and perhaps drive home 
with her in her brougham through the drowsing streets. The 
officers were the last to go, concluding each compliment with 
a jerky salute that set the marble floor ringing with their 
spurs. 

Then it was I recognised one of these men — a young cap- 
tain whose face had worried me all evening, reminding me 
of some one antipathetic and whose name I could not recall. 
Where had I seen before that hawk’s head set on leonine 
shoulders ? That virile, though strangely proportioned, phy- 
sique suggestive of an heraldic animal ; now suddenly as the 
fellow saluted Marie-Therese, I knew him — Kerlavoz ! The 
man I had seen and envied the day I met the Roumistorf on 
the first visit that ever I paid to Madame Colbert. Kerlavoz ! 
yes, that was the name of the officer who had been ordered to 
Yerdun, against whose absence my mistress had rebelled and 
who, of her lovers, I sometimes thought she most regretted. 

“May I see you home ?” he asked with assumed obse- 
quiousness, the past in his eyes. 

“Of course,” she answered simply. And he went out to 
signal for her carriage. She laughed when she turned round 


148 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


to find me still there. We were alone. “You silly hoy,” 
she said, making the brusque words seem like a caress as 
only she knew how. 

I felt the tears of weakness, of miserable self-pity, scorch 
my eyes. “When shall I see you?” I pleaded; “will you 
come to the Rue du Marais Friday ?” 

“I can’t.” She radiated happiness to-night. 

“Saturday, say you will Saturday.” 

“Well, Saturday then.” 

“At five?” 

“At five.” 

“Promise, do you promise ?” 

“Yes.” 

“You will come, surely, Marie-Therese ?” 

“Yes, yes — let go of my hands — you’re mad to go on like 
this. Don’t you hear him coming back ?” 

Transfigured she turned to him. She slipped her arm 
through his and left me. “Good-night, Monsieur de Vau- 
court, or good-morrow rather.” Her eyes were still full of 
light as she glanced back at me. She looked more insinuating, 
more sinuous, more of a woman than I had ever seen her be- 
fore. 

I caught up with her and held open the door for her as 
she passed out. Opposite me stood her footman, her ermine 
carriage-rug over his arm. 

I heard her laugh as Kerlavoz followed her into the 
brougham. He had paid her a compliment, I felt sure. 

The valet glanced in my direction. I made a sign I was 
not coming. He touched his hat to me and went to the 
brougham to get his orders. I saw a pair of man’s hands 
cuffed with red cloth and gold braid stretch out of the car- 
riage for the ermine rug, and I turned back into the Maison 
Doree. 

I could not help, though, but hear her drive away. The 
hoofs of her roans set the restaurant windows clattering. 

What a miserable walk I had through the dawn to the 


A WOMAN’ S MAN 


149 


Latin quarter! The day was breaking in a suet-coloured 
drizzle, and through the mist Paris showed as a doomed city, 
exhausted by poverty and impregnated by the odour of the 
Seine, its dead, rotten smell. 

Gradually, as I approached the house I called home, an 
insane sadness chilled me. I knew now of what I was afraid. 
I could give a name to my presentiment — Kerlavoz. Till 
now I had been indefinitely jealous — jealous of interchanged 
glances and social compliments, jealous of the men she 
danced with and talked to, jealous of her past and of her 
future, jealous of her servants who lived in her house, of her 
dog, of the strangers who looked in her face, jealous in a 
wholesale way, jealous by the gross. But never before had my 
fear centred on one individual. I had never envied one man 
more than another. Never before had I hated one figure, 
one voice above all others. And this form of anguish was so 
new, so intense, that it amounted to a physical sensation. I 
suffocated as though a human hand had me by the throat. 

I opened my door and shambled into my room. My poor 
room, all pitifully arranged for study — the green shaded 
lamp, the desk, the row of books to set the student’s heart 
beating! She had come to me here, she had dragged her 
skirts over my threshold and wiped the peace out of my life. 
Why, I would never have looked at the woman, I would never 
have troubled about her if she had not shown me her secret, 
greedy thoughts glistening in her eyes. I might have been 
happy, I might have been free, I might have written such 
verses as these — by now I had unlocked my desk, taken out 
the Boumistorf’s manuscript and was reverently turning over 
the pages — I, too, had been a poet — I, too, had dreamed just 
such dreams, but I had lost my birthright for Marie-Therese. 

This verse warmed me, revived me. I knew it almost by 
heart and could read it in the dawn. I liked the diapason 
repeated on the third line. I could appreciate beauty still, 
thank God. I was enough of a poet for that. This Boumi- 
storf, this ugly woman wrote of love as though she knew it. 


150 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


It was my own story, she told just as I would have told it if 
I could have found the words. And naively I pictured my- 
self saying to Marie-Therese, “I am not the man Kerlavoz is. 
I could never make you feel I am your master. I know I am 
not worth the man you love, hut listen, Marie-Therese.” 
And then I would read her just such a poem as this, that I 
held here in my hand. I would say, “This is written of you, 
for you,” and startle her into loving me. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


“The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me and that which 
I was afraid of has come unto me.” 


Job. 


It was close on five o’clock before I determined to leave 
onr room in the Rue du Marais. I had waited since two. 
The shadow of the wardrobe had grown gigantic, by now it 
stretched from the alcove to the door. Hever had I seen it 
inch across the floor like this, for always when I had been 
here before at this hour, the blinds were drawn. How the 
room looked strange, flooded with sun, gaping, with its every 
window reverberating to my restless feet. With each sec- 
ond the tick of the clock seemed to get faster, faster, till it 
broke into a gallop and my heart kept pace with it. Impa- 
tient, suspicious, sick imaginings were here, they tracked me 
up and down, they drove me out into the street. I would go 
to the Parc Monceau, I would go to Marie-Therese, I would 
reproach her for having failed me like this, I would upbraid 
her for not coming, for not sending me word even, for ut- 
terly disregarding me. Could it be she had forgotten the 
promise she had made me at the Maison Doree ? or was she 
ill ? or else — no, no — I had no right to distrust her. 

I remember this day as though it were yesterday. I re- 
call the very quality of the air, the deep blue sky, the reek of 
the hot asphalt. A big moment in my life was nearing as I 
hurried through the sun-baked street. 

The Rue du Marais was silent as a cloister, drowsing in 
a calm that suggested the provinces, the siestas of the South, 
till rounding the corner a newsboy set the street ringing with 
his clarion cry. He was calling a special edition of the P etit 
Journal, and something in the rigmarole he sang out, in the 

151 


152 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


see-saw of the repeated phrase, startled me. I thought I had 
distinguished a familiar name. There — he said it again — 
Roumistorf. I came to a standstill, and when the boy was 
abreast of me I stopped him and bought a paper of him. He 
went off with stretched throat, I understood him now. “Sea 
tragedy! Natal disaster! The Princess Roumistorf’s expe- 
dition ship, the Aurora , goes down with all on board ! Spe- 
cial edition! Sea tragedy! Natal disaster! The Princess 
Roumistorf’s expedition ship ... !” 

On the front page was a photograph of my friend, one of 
those bleary wood-cuts that disfigure any face. The Princess 
was represented feeding her boar-hounds, the sun in her eyes, 
she was grimacing all unprepared for his Majesty — Death. 

Naded, grotesque as was the likeness, nevertheless it 
brought her before me vividly. I could imagine her grum- 
bling — “Brutal luck to finish like this in known waters, to go 
down in sight of shore,” for it seemed according to the Petit 
J oumal that the Aurora caught in a gale had floundered in 
the Straits of Messina, the engine had exploded and the 
ship had burnt down too rapidly even to set the life-boats 
adrift. The Figaro, however — before I had gone a few 
yards, I had had half a dozen papers thrust into my hands — 
on the look-out for copy probably, held out a vague hope that 
the wreck had been wrongly identified and hinted that we 
might yet hear of the Princess Roumistorf landing safely at 
Beira. But I knew that this was only a consoling myth, one 
of the sensational fables in which our Press revels. My 
friend was dead, I was assured of it if only by the little cold 
breath that chilled my scalp and made my hair rise as I read 
of the flaming ship sinking in the black sea. 

Never should I meet another woman who could replace 
the Princess in my heart. I owed her a debt, she had be- 
lieved in me when no one else did, in my talent, in my fu- 
ture. She had made me feel work was worth while. What 
could I do for her now ? Could I serve her as a friend still ? 
Yes, for she had left me a charge, a sacred trust. I was re- 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


153 


sponsible for her posthumous poems, I would copy out her 
last verses, give them to the world, and so add to her good 
name. 

By this time I had turned into the Parc Monceau. I 
have never liked this spot because of its pampered lawns and 
prize trees, its pattern beds set with floral specimens, with 
roses phenomenal as those that grow on hats, with daisies, 
forced, clipped, monstrous, as though competing for an ag- 
ricultural show. Artifice, money has tampered with the soil 
here. 

The newsboys were still calling the Roumistorf’s death 
over the city, but I was deaf to their voices now. As I neared 
Madame Colbert’s house, as I mounted her steps, I had for- 
gotten the Princess. Only one thought persisted — why had 
Marie-Therese failed to meet me in the Rue du Marais, why 
had she played me false this afternoon ? 

Tense, imperious, I rang the bell. In his jargon, the 
foreign valet informed me that Madame was not well, she 
could see no one. At once mollified, I was about to turn away 
when some one called me by name and I heard, padding 
down the hall, the stealthy tread of felt shoes. The valet 
stepped aside, another servant took his place. This latter 
was a suave, bald person in an alpaca apron. He was clean- 
shaven as an actor and as glib and blatantly disinterested as 
the faithful retainer in melodrama. This fellow Bastian was 
general factotum about the house and Marie-Therese’s con- 
fidant, I suspected. I had given him a fee several times be- 
cause of his dangerous urbanity and the disconcerting twin- 
kle of his false little eyes. 

Now he came close to me and, as though fearing to be 
overheard, mouthed into my ear, “Ah, Monsieur de V aucourt, 
that poor Princess! What a calamity! Madame has been 
like one distracted since she heard the news ! She cries every 
tear in her body, ah! she has locked herself in her room! 
She had taken to her bed !” And he, in his turn, had to step 
aside. Monsieur Jacques Colbert, faultlessly cravatted, a 


154 A WOMAN’S MAN 

wide-open gardenia in his button-hole, had emerged from the 
vestibule. 

“Ah, Armand,” he called pleasantly, “you have come to 
see my wife. That is right, my dear hoy, she will he en- 
chanted. She is in the salon with Kerlavoz. By the way, 
Bastian” — and Monsieur Colbert, one varnished shoe over 
the threshold, halted to draw on his gloves — “Madame has 
just rung for tea. What sun, what a breeze! When I was 
your age, Armand, and there was as much blue in the sky as 
to-day, I would have been on the Seine in a skiff, and not 
alone in the skiff, ha, ha! Dear me, yes, that’s the way I 
spent the fine weather when I was a youngster. Well, go in, 
dear lad — what — you think you won’t, eh ? Just stopped to 
ask how my wife is — how she bore the shock. Ah, yes, the 
news of our poor Princess — very considerate of you. A sad 
thing, is it not? A dramatic episode. You have taken it to 
heart, I can see, you’re very pale. But that’s right, culti- 
vate sensibility. Sensibility after all, what else makes the 
artist ? But que didble , you needn’t faint over it. Here walk 
along with me, slowly. Breathe deep, that will bring you 
round.” And he slipped his arm through mine and led me 
down the steps. 

I knew the worst now. She had bribed her servants to 
lie to me, and I had all but gone away from her door, soothed, 
deceived, just such another fatuous fool as her husband. 

With his talent for making himself ridiculous, he was 
actually enumerating his wife’s virtues, swinging his walk- 
ing-stick, inhaling the May wind. Still, he was ready to ad- 
mit Marie-Therese had one fault — she was too proud. She 
kept too rigorously aloof, made too few friends, was difficile , 
haughty even, and yet this Diana-like quality, this innate, 
almost savage self-respect was, he conceded, the only safe- 
guard for a wife nowadays when the Church has no hold 
over women. 

I was ashamed for him as for another self. I felt like 
shaking him by his immaculate collar. I was tempted to 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


155 


cry out, “Open your eyes at la3t — see what you have married. 
Come hack with me now to your house and I will show you. 
What can we do !” 

The “we” was characteristic of my mental attitude to- 
wards Jacques Colbert. He had always seemed to me a com- 
panion in distress rather than the husband of the woman I 
loved. I do not pretend to explain the fact, but I had always 
liked him, I had never been jealous of him. Indeed, I re- 
sented personally his wife’s scandalous treatment of him. I 
felt our interests — his and mine were the same. Ours was 
a common cause. We were partners joined together against 
her future, against her lovers to be. Colbert was her past, 
ignored long ago, I was her present of which I felt she was 
already forgetful. 

Unconscious idiot that he was, I at once pitied and en- 
vied him. After all, his was the supreme wisdom perhaps. 
It might be best to accept life without questions, to lay no 
traps for truth, to believe in love from word of mouth. 

He was full of cheerful banter to-day, he kept me to a 
brisk pace as he strode along to the creak of his new boots, 
twaddling all the while of his wife. After a time I could no 
longer endure him and at the end of the colonnade by the 
lake, “I am leaving you here,” I said, and turning abruptly 
I went back as we had come. 

But when I saw through the foliage her house, pale as a 
human face, peering at me with all its windows, Argus-eyed, 
I took fright ; the fagade showed so derisively white, the very 
stones seemed animated by a cold malevolence. I thought, “I 
am going mad,” and I sank down on a bench near the curb 
with my hands to my head. I felt behind me something, 
some one, a presence — Folly — and all her hollow bells jan- 
gled in my temples. 

It had come at last, the day I had foreseen and dreaded, 
when Marie-Therese would tire of me and pass the hours 
she had promised me with another. What she had felt for 
me had run its course. Her caprices ended like this, no 


156 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


doubt. This was the climax of her game. I had known this 
hour inevitable. I had expected it from the first. Why 
should it hurt me so ? I had never had confidence in her, I 
had never respected her. It should be easy to break with her 
now — and I shut my eyes and saw her at her best, when she 
smiled and youth flitted over her face. 

I remembered a strange moment we had had together in 
the Rue du Marais. She had been before the glass — I behind 
her, and the reflection of our eyes had met. She had drawn 
off her close-fitting toque and shaken her torrid hair loose. 
Why did I recall that instant of all others? And I pressed 
my fingers on my eyelids to shut out the jiggling green discs 
the leaves cast dancing in the sun. 

Should I go to her now, should I break in upon her tete- 
a-tete? Should I reproach her, resort to irony, talk clever 
phrases, or blurt my heart out, make a fool of myself ? Should 
I go to her? My sense of dramatic fitness prevented me. 
I did not feel I could carry out the situation in a grand 
enough style. I was too inexperienced to play so tragic a role. 
It needed an older hand at suffering than I to impose upon 
these two, happy in their refound intimacy, glorying in each 
other’s company. I imagined the scene, the screech of the por- 
tiere on its rings as I tore it aside — oh, the torture of sen- 
sual jealousy with its physical hallucinations, its vivid, im- 
pure visions! 

I do not know how long I stayed there on that bench bent 
double, mentally howling. When I heard a step, I would 
glance up. I was waiting to see Kerlavoz pass, I wanted to 
look at him well. I was curious to know if I could discern 
any especial power or charm in the man. I was anxious to 
see if he and I were not somewhat alike, if I did not resem- 
ble him, since the woman who loved him had once fancied 
me. 

I did not see him come out of the house, but I heard him 
nearing me. I knew it was his step from the after-click of 
the spur, and as he passed I stood up and took off my hat to 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


157 


him. He did not recognise me. “Who the devil is this?” 
I read in the glint of his sharp, black eyes. But he drew him- 
self up courteously and saluted me. Between his white glove 
and his cuff, I saw his brawny wrist, dark with hair. 

I followed him. He turned to the left, I after him. Down 
the Boulevard Malherbes he went as far as the Bois de Bou- 
logne. There he took to a by-path that leads deep into the 
wood, I tracking him. Now and then a twig cracked and 
some one passed us coming from the lake going homewards. 
Sometimes it was a nurse, genially beribboned, often a group 
of children leaping, chattering, twittering, taking with them 
all the noises of the wood till gradually the silence grew 
poignant. 

It was twilight by now, the trees were closing in about 
us. Between the trunks, I saw something steel-coloured 
stretched along the ground like a sheet; an odour of mould, 
the reek of soaked foliage blew chill. We were nearing the 
lake; in the dusk the water had taken on a disquieting tint, 
a livid shade. 

I do not remember what I said to him, it was something 
trivial about the beauty of the lake or the forest. I swear I 
had no definite purpose when I joined him. I only wanted 
to hear him speak. I was smiling, I thought, but I saw him 
dart a look at my hands. They were empty, I had not even a 
cane, and very slowly I backed towards a bench where I had 
noticed a child’s hoop forgotten. The stick lay there, my 
hand closed over it, I crouched and for an instant, I saw the 
man facing me as Marie-Therese saw him, with the eyes of 
her love, and I sprang at him and struck him. 

I meant to hit him in the face, but he jerked back. The 
blow fell across his chest and under the stroke, a puff of dust, 
a whiff of rice-powder perhaps, such as women use, rose out 
of the breast of his coat, drifted over his shoulder and was 
gone in a breath. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


“He perceived that he should die . . . and the beauty of women 
was changed.” 


Maccabees I. 


I was engaged to fight a duel ; as well say — for ignorant 
of firearms I was pitted against as good a shot as any in 
France — that on the following Wednesday, I was engaged to 
die. And the event had come about in so incredible a fash- 
ion. It was all so fantastic, monstrous, grotesque, that I 
would pause in the midst of settling my affairs — I had plenty 
to do, what with making my will, copying out the Roumi- 
storf’s poems, writing to my mother for the last time a letter 
to he sent after my death — I would pause, I say, and putting 
my hands to my head I would ask myself, with a smile al- 
most, when did I dream all this ? 

It was strange, hut I, who had gone through life inces- 
santly agitated, constantly afraid, I, who suffocated with 
nerves when a door slammed, I, who never went to the den- 
tist or entered a room full of strangers without disordinate 
heart-heats, yet now I faced the certainty, as I believed, of 
being shot down, of being butchered in cold blood, with 
entire composure. 

My dominant feeling was one of self-contempt, also I 
was devoured with regret. I regretted having to lose my 
life, having to forego all the chances it offered, chances of 
pleasure, chances of success. I was a fool to die for such a 
woman. One did not fight for Marie-Therese and her like; 
one paid her and her sort — not in money, certainly, but in 
jewels, flowers, attentions — one took off one’s hat to her, in 
public, exaggeratedly low. But in one’s heart one called her 
— the old Biblical word tells best the thing she was. 

158 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


159 


Now for the first time, since I had known Marie-Therese, 
I was heart free. I could pass a shop window and see it gay 
with feminine gim-cracks or hung with soft stuffs and not 
think how would that shawl look on her shoulders or that 
jewel at her throat. No longer now every woman reminded 
me of her. In the past, all women had recalled her to me 
either by some resemblance of face, of gesture, or by the very 
contrast their physiques offered to hers. All the streets did 
not seem to lead to her door, all the traffic, all the roar of 
Paris was not meant for her alone as it seemed to be when I 
loved her. It was as though the prospect of death had freed 
me of my passion. No, I no longer loved Marie-Therese. 
Indeed, I asked myself if I ever had loved her, if rather I 
had not been the prey of an obsession, of a morbid sentiment. 
What I had known for her was abnormal, a weakness, a form 
of insanity and I remembered Ernest had once told me that 
romances, love-stories, great passions like most other forms 
of madness never occur in savage tribes. What I had suffered 
then was a modern ailment of the mind, a taint of our civili- 
sation, I, like any poor devil howling in a strait jacket, had 
been mad. I was sane now with a clear brain full of energy 
and the joy of life, only to find I had to die. 

I determined not to see Marie-Therese again, not even to 
write to her good-bye, and so indifferent had I grown to her 
that the decision cost me nothing. 

Seven o’clock in the Bois de Boulogne, the Porte Mail- 
lot, was the time and the place appointed for the duel. Ern- 
est served me for a second. lie had come from Tours — he 
had been settled for the last few weeks there — in answer to 
my telegram. 

“Pistols — he has decided for pistols,” and I do not think 
I ever saw Ernest more pleased with himself or with the 
world in general than he seemed now when he confided to me 
the outcome of his interview with Kerlavoz’s second. The 
meeting had taken place at the Cafe Turc. It seemed the 
officer had treated my friend to a liqueur, to more than one 


160 


A WOMAN'S MAN 


I suspected, had done things in style in fact, and Ernest was 
full of praise of the military, their punctuality, their virile 
good manners, the steady nerve and heads impervious to al- 
cohol, that the army develops. I cut him short. 

“I wish it had been swords, I would have stood more 
chance." 

But Ernest, indifferent to human life where honour was 
concerned, waived the suggestion with, “It was for him to 
choose the weapon, he was the offended party," and his spec- 
tacles positively sparkling with enthusiasm, Ernest held 
forth on the noble art of duelling. In technical terms he dis- 
cussed measuring the ground, pacing the distance between the 
adversaries, the sort of shot to he used, etc., gauging me the 
while with an eye that made me feel the bullet already in 
my breast. He enjoyed it all hugely. 

That same evening, the night before the duel, as I was 
sitting at my desk trying to tune my mind to thoughts of 
immortality, “It is not to make you feel down and out of 
sorts, dear old hoy," said the considerate Ernest who was 
taking a snack of supper off my centre table, “I know you 
need all your spirits — " and at the word spirits, he helped 
himself to some of the sort kept in bottles, “but your mother 
is very low, sarcoma of the liver — nasty thing — affects the 
temper. No wonder you found her difficult to get along with 
lately ; she does not know how serious it is fortunately, thinks 
she has indigestion, but I don't give her a month to live." 

Under ordinary circumstances, such news would have 
shocked me inexpressibly, now I hardly suffered. I felt that 
to-night marked the end of the world for me. I felt that 
every one I had ever loved was lost to me already. I did 
not ask one question, or give vent to one word of pain or 
protest. 

Ernest looked up, surprised at my silence, then proceeded 
to talk of himself. His wife was expecting their child soon, 
she thought it was going to he a hoy, he knew it was going to 
be a girl, and really all considered, he did not see why it 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


161 

should not be a genius since daughters were so apt to take 
after their fathers. Then education, too, meant so much. 
He would show the world how a child should be brought up 
and he discussed Rousseau’s system and held forth on the 
immortal Emile till the small hours. 

About two p. m. he remarked that I had best get some 
sleep if I meant to have steady nerves and put a bullet 
through Kerlavoz, and warning me not to think about to- 
morrow, and encouraging me to be a philosopher like him- 
self, he shook me by the hand and went to bed. 

I could not sleep, I had still a great deal to do. I en- 
closed the copy I had made of the Princess Roumistorf’s 
poems in an envelope and addresesd the envelope to Jacques 
Colbert. I left it on my desk leaning against my inkstand. 
Then I re-wrote my letter to my mother. I knew I had 
failed her as a son, I said. It was almost a confession I made 
her, but somehow I could not find the words to express the 
dumb, aching tenderness I felt for her. I added a message 
for Bernardette and my heart was still full of the thought 
of home when I laid down on my bed and tried to rest, but 
whenever I closed my eyes, there sounded in my head a sharp 
report like a pistol shot, or rather like the clash of a gong. 
The sound, purely imaginary, nevertheless startled me as 
though I were gun-shy. The noise had rung in my skull more 
or less all evening for I had bought a pistol the day before 
and had spent the afternoon in a shooting gallery practising. 
Ernest, who had accompanied me, had been lavish of advice, 
illustrating his meaning by aiming at the bull’s eye and 
missing it. If anything, he was rather a worse shot than I. 

Feeling I should not sleep, I lay still with open eyes 
watching the dawn inching along the ceiling, and as I saw 
the sun gaining the room, reaching almost to the cornice, a 
phrase to greet the day passed through my mind and then 
another phrase even more prettily turned. Slowly as though 
recovering from paralysis, I sat up ; my brain delivered from 
the thought of Marie-Therese had asserted itself. A tingling 


162 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


crept over me, my heart started to throb and I got up and 
wrote a sonnet in which I told the world good-bye. 

After that I dressed very carefully and had to wait still 
quite a quarter of an hour before Ernest, correct as an un- 
dertaker and officially grim, came to fetch me. 

The sky was radiant, glaring, acutely blue and Paris, like 
a tropical city, flooded with sun. Nevertheless I felt a little 
cold and drew up one of the windows of the fiacre in which 
Ernest and I went jogging towards the Porte Maillot. 

My friend kept fidgeting and looking at his watch. At 
first he feared we were going to be late, then he hoped we 
would not be too early. It was a nerve-racking business 
waiting. He advised me not to turn nervous at the last mo- 
ment, not to be panic-struck. A steady hand was essential, 
remember, and he bade me bear in mind that I had beside 
me a versatile second, able not only to back me up on the 
field before the duel, but to serve me afterwards in the capac- 
ity of doctor. 

I acquiesced dispassionately. My unconcern, my almost 
anaemic indifference, was disappointing to Ernest, I think. 
He would have liked me to vituperate against Kerlavoz, or 
else to have me show a little human weakness, a need of en- 
couragement, for he was fond of scenes, poignant situations 
and crucial moments. Now he kept his hard little eye gleam- 
ing on me, summing me up through his glasses. I knew he 
thought I had not a chance, that he would not give for my 
life, to use his own words, the snap of finger and thumb. 

At the corner of the Avenue de la Grande Armee, a 
market-cart held us up before a newspaper kiosk, and I 
remember it passed through my mind that to-morrow at this 
hour perhaps, my story, in just such black print, might be 
hanging out here in the sun and the breeze. 

At the Porte Maillot we had to wait; we were ahead of 
time. I paid the cabman and Ernest and I walked up and 
down side by side. The sward was brilliantly green, extra- 
ordinarily springy, I remember, and pungent. We were both 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


163 


silent. From out of the grass, little white moths fluttered, 
passed up into the air and vanished with the sun in their 
wings. 

Suddenly, “They are here,” said Ernest who had looked 
hack over his shoulder, and turning I saw two officers get out 
of a private carriage. One of them carried a box, they were 
followed by a third man in civilian dress — the doctor prob- 
ably. Gravely they greeted us, we all interchanged bows 
and set off through the woods, ceremoniously. Kerlavoz’s 
second led the way, Ernest and I came last. I dropped be- 
hind him after a while and walked alone. 

I knew this Avenue well. I had driven through it often 
with Marie-Therese, but I saw it for the first time with the 
inner view of the artist now. I was imbued through and 
through with its beauty. The linden trees quivering beside 
the road were to me sylvan creatures drawn up in files about 
to race each other, their hair beating their sun-chequered 
thighs. 

We rounded a corner, the view opened up. We came to a 
clearing and stopped, but the man I took for the doctor hav- 
ing said something to Ernest, I caught the word police, we 
started off again. We had not gone a yard, however, when: 
“This will do,” and Kerlavoz turned back into the field ; we 
followed him. “This place is as good as another,” he called 
to us. The grass was to his knees by now, but he pointed 
beyond to a shaven bit of lawn and when he reached the spot 
he faced about, he looked me in the eyes. I could not analyse 
his expression. It seemed to transpierce me, yet it was not 
unfriendly, I thought. He had begun to take off his gaunt- 
lets. They were of doe-skin and I remember, as I waded 
through the grass, wondering inconsequently how he man- 
aged to draw his gloved hand out of his pocket without pull- 
ing out the lining, without turning it inside out. I con- 
cluded he was one of those Apollo-like beings who are imper- 
vious to accident, who can never be made to look ridiculous. 
He was the ideal hero who never loses his stirrups, whose 


164 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


hat never blows through the street, and as I threw off my 
coat, took my place ahd faced him, I hated him with a racial 
hatred. \ * 

Monsieur de •Kerlay.cfz’s second was holding out to me 
what at first looked life two tubes of glass, so brilliant was 
the steel. I inclined to the weapon in his right hand, but I 
did not want to seem to choose, so I stretched out my arm 
and took the first pistol f touched. It was heavier than the 
one I hgad pr^cti^ed with, of another make, and the trigger 
felt unfamiliar. My dominant thought was, “I never sup- 
posed I should die.J^ke this, I never suspected it.” 

The offerer gave the signal, I took the determined num- 
ber of steps, furne<J and fired at the one dark spot I saw, the 
blotch Kerlavpg’s shoulders n£ade in the electric green of the 
foliage. f f 

The two reports were instantaneous, while something 
whistled past my ear. ''But no, the bullet must have caught 
me full in the chest, I was done for surely, for the dark 
blotch I stared at seemed to sway — it crumpled, dwindled, 
vanished into the grass. I stood .*■ waiting to fall, it was 
strange I felt no pain — the su!n was warm, crickets chirped 
— My God ! I could not credit my senses, I could not believe 
I was alive. I was saved! 

Ernest had me by both hands, he was giggling and where 
but an instant before, Kerlavoz had stood, I saw crouching 
figures, bent backs, the soles of shoes. 

Ernest and I lunched at the Pavilion d’Armenonville in 
the Bois. I told the orchestra leader to play “La Eille de 
Madame Angot,” then all the rage, and I gave him a royal 
fee, and while the violins were voicing my respite, my secret 
jubilation, I looked out over the swaying foliage to where, not 
half a mile away, was the field where I had fought that 
morning, where I had left Kerlavoz sitting up spitting blood. 

I had thought him dying at first, hut no, it seemed the bul- 
let had only passed through the lung grazing the spleen. He 


A WOMAN’S MAN 165 

would be laid up for at least a month though', the doctor had 
told me. 

Ernest and I sniggered over the adventure. I had gone 
up mercurially in his opinion and in my own. I ate, drank, 
smoked and stared very hard at the women. As they passed 
me in the scented breeze of ruffles and scarves, I would lean 
back and look up into their faces. I would stare at the space 
between their eyebrows just above the root of the nose trying 
to project my glance into their eyes, trying to dominate them 
by my expression, to force them to either respond or to resent 
my admiration, but often they looked down, their lashes hid 
their thoughts from me, secretive they passed. What an in- 
finite, complex wonder is the beauty of women; I was in a 
glow of physical well-being. 

Late the same evening as Ernest and I drove into Paris, 
both the worse for our libations, he asleep, my thoughts 
veered. With the sunset a chill had come over the city. In 
the wind, the gas-jets flared like prophetic torches and the 
fiacre lanterns darted by quick as premonitions. 1 feared 
bad news, dreaded it at every turning. I felt it lying in 
wait for me. What was it ? 

I could not formulate my sadness till, alone in my room 
that night, I saw leaning against my inkstand the envelope 
enclosing the Princess Poumistorf’s manuscript. The pack- 
age was addressed in my hand in large letters to Jacques 
Colbert. Then I remembered the woman who was his wife. 
When I had written these words, I had been free of her ready 
to die; now, after all I was alive — here in Paris with her, 
and at the thought the old torment, the old love overcame 
me. 

Pitiful creature that I was, I wanted to forgive her, I 
wanted to see her again. I wanted to hear her lie to me and 
be fooled by her. In spite of proof, common sense, the eyes 
in my head, I believed in her, as I believed in immortality, 
without reasoning. I had to, or else how could I endure to 
go on living! 


CHAPTER XXIX 


i 

i 


(t . . . And when he hath stolen, spoiled and robbed he bringeth it to 
his love. 

Yea, many there be that have run out of their wits for women and 
become servants for their sake. 

Many also have perished, have erred and sinned for women.” 

Esdras I. 

The next morning I asked eagerly for my mail. My life 
would be set straight if Marie-Therese had written justify- 
ing herself. One word of excuse from her and I would wor- 
ship her like the Madonna. But no, she had nothing to say 
for herself, there was no letter from her. 

After I had seen Ernest off for Tours, I could not decide 
whether or not I should visit her that afternoon. I made an 
omen, I threw a franc into the air and caught it. Heads! 
The presage seemed to be indisputable, Fate willed it, so I 
went. p 

She was not alone, Martin, Colbert’s illustrator, was with 
her. She was sitting with her back to the light in an arm- 
chair buoyed up with cushions although she had been ill. 
I was not surprised to find her huddled in laces, all the lan- 
guor of the invalid in her eyes, for like many people who 
take drugs, she was a confirmed hypochondriac, often com- 
plaining of strange aches and pains. She would ride across 
country as though escaping from justice, drink like a Bac- 
chante, dance a Dryad off her feet, then suddenly collapse 
and lie on the divan for a week whining like a sick child. 

How she was explaining her symptoms. She had a 
stitch in her side, she said, she felt as though she had swal- 
lowed a live crab and the creature was pinching her in the 
ribs with its claws. The illustrator, an old man with a sag- 

166 

% 

■ *r 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


167 


ging jaw, was listening reverently, holding his hat between 
his knees. He suggested she was suffering from her liver, 
hut no, she feared she might somehow inadvertently have 
swallowed a pin, and at the mere thought her lips trembled, 
an expression of childish anxiety, a look that made her seem 
younger widened her eyes. She was pitifully naive, can- 
did, unselfconscious in her terror of fantastic ailments. 

As I closed the door, she did not move her head on the 
lace pillow, hut her eyes turned gradually in my direction. 
“Ah,” said she in an ambiguous fashion, she did not offer me 
her hand. Something in her manner turned me cold. I 
took a chair and waited. She ignored me. 

Her indisposition, she told Martin, was perhaps after all 
merely due to anxiety. She had lived constantly on the 
strain of late, she had suffered shock after shock. People 
never spared her — no, they thought her strong. It never 
occurred to any one to break bad news to her considerately. 
How had she heard of the Princess Roumistorf’s death, for 
instance? She had simply picked up the newspaper and — 
she had loved her like a sister. “The world is indifferent, 
cruel, Monsieur Martin!” 

“Ah, there’s a clever woman lost,” said he preparing to 
leave. “Who will take her place ?” 

“No one. Lyric verse has no future here with us in 
France.” 

This last remark hurt me ; Madame Colbert knew I meant 
to be a poet. I felt she was purposely ignoring my ambition, 
disregarding my chances of success. 

Martin bowed himself out and I sat looking into the 
crown of my hat. I had come prepared to demand of Marie- 
Therese an account of herself. I had meant to ask her how 
she had spent the afternoon she had promised me. I had 
earned the right to question her, since I had risked my life 
for her. I had loved her too implicitly for her to lie to me 
now. She owed me an honest answer — I would tell her so. 
Besides it was useless to try to deceive me. I knew her better 


168 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


than she believed. I would prove it. I would quote inci- 
dents in her life which no doubt she thought I ignored. I 
would cause her to blush, if ever she had blushed, and, if to 
hear the truth could hurt her, I would pay her hack for all 
she had made me suffer. 

Yet now I found nothing to say. Somehow she forced me 
to feel that it was not she but I who was at fault. She had 
turned her face away from me and closed her eyes. Her 
peignoir clung to her inanimate form, she did not seem to 
draw a breath yet a string of pearls kept stirring on her 
breast. I did not dare move. I felt responsible for every 
sound — from the traffic in the street to the tick of the clock, 
and gradually in her presence my resentment began to ebb. 
I longed to make it up with her, a suffocating need of her 
took me at the throat like a sob. I sat motionless, lost in the 
contemplation of her body. The droop of the shoulders and 
the hands lying relaxed, the pink palms turned upward. 

I got up and went to her. I bent over her. “Marie- 
Therese,” I said. She opened her eyes full on me; they 
mirrored nothing of what I felt for her, none of the desire 
that had driven me to her. Her big pupils were unrespon- 
sive, she stared at me one moment as at a stranger and I 
understood she was beginning to dislike me. 

“Marie-Therese,” I cried. She put her hands on my 
shoulders and pushed me away from her petulantly. “Oh, 
no scenes, please. You have made yourself ridiculous enough 
and me, too,” she added bitterly. 

“Ridiculous, how?” 

“With your proprietary airs and your crazy temper and 
your duel.” 

“Ah, now we have it. Kerlavoz is hurt. Poor dear Ivan ! 
That’s it, that’s why I am ridiculous. It was chivalrous to 
confide in you, perhaps he thought you would interrupt the 
duel.” 

“The duel — that a duel ! The thing was a farce. Poor 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


169 


dear Ivan as yon call him, let yon off with your life. He 
told me he wasn’t going to hurt you.” 

“He told you that?” 

“He told me that,” she answered brutally. “Ivan shot 
over your head as he promised me. Come now, do you sup- 
pose Ivan would aim at you — at a boy ?' No, he is not a child 
murderer.” 

“You did not always think me a child.” 

“More fool I, then. This is what comes of it. You make 
a laughing-stock of me — you’re too much of a fire-eater. I 
shall he talked about all over town.” 

“You have been talked about all over town before.” 

“Oh, I don’t mind a scandal, only this silly affair! 
Frankly, when I am gossiped about, I like to he paired off 
with a man who is worth while.” 

She had sunk hack in her chair, her hand to her side, her 
nostrils dilated, she panted, pale, satisfied. 

I drew away from her. I remember thinking, “I do not 
love her any more. That is good, I am glad.” 

As I left her, “Armand,” she called after me in a changed 
voice. “Armand, come here.” 

I was so used to obeying her that I turned, I went back 
to her. 

She gave me both her hands. “Forgive me,” she said. 
“We have known too many perfect moments together. We 
must stay friends at any rate, dear hoy.” 

I saw her eyebrows contract. She winced. “I beg your 
pardon,” I whispered and let go her hands. I must have hurt 
her for, all unconsciously, I had been pressing and twisting 
her fingers in mine. 

She gave me hack her hands and drew me to a chair be- 
side her. “I was unkind just now, Armand. Yes, I know 
I had no right to speak to you as I did. It is no concern of 
mine if you care to he — well, just a nice young fellow in- 
stead of what you could he, what you ought to be — a man 
worth while, a man a woman could he proud to belong to.” 


170 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


Her voice vibrated through me. She took my face between 
her hands, she pressed my temples with her fingers. “Ar- 
mand, I am ambitious for you, that’s the truth. I am angry 
with you, my lazy darling. I want the world to know what 
fine things there are here in this head of yours.” Her big, 
fulgent eyes looked into mine. She smiled and stroked my 
hair as though I were a dog. 

I did not believe her. Whatever trust she had felt in my 
future was worn out long ago. The slight notoriety I had 
had at one time when I first came to Paris and wrote at her 
inspiration, had dwindled, was gone and with it, whatever 
charm I once possessed for her. Now she only wanted, for 
some reason of her own, to conciliate me, to try her power 
on me, to keep herself in practice as it were, for a better man. 
I knew it and yet I hoped to win her back. I revived under 
the soft stroke of her hand. I was pitifully hers, pitiably at 
her mercy. 

In the eternal comedy of the sexes, some one must play 
the fool’s part. Among the unedited poems the Princess 
Roumistorf left me to revise, there were some verses to this 
effect I said the lines now to Marie-Therese holding her 
hands, kneading them nervously, abashed at myself for quot- 
ing poetry, looking at her the while in the face despairingly. 

A startled expression dawned in her eyes. “Did you 
write that?” and her mouth remained open after her ques- 
tion, pouting a little as though to say, “Perhaps, after all, he 
is no fool.” Her parted lips fascinated me. “Did you write 
that, Armand?” 

I did not look away from her mouth and after a pause I 
answered, “Yes.” I was surprised by my weak, heady voice. 

“But it’s beautiful, have you written any other poems — 
enough to bring out in a little book ?” The grasp of her 
hands had tightened, her delicate fingers clung to mine. 

I answered more promptly this time and louder, “Yes.” 

“Send them to Jacques then. I’ll have him publish 
them. Get them off to him as soon as possible.” 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


171 


“Yes,” I said again and I sat smiling, dazed, inexpress- 
ibly content to feel her once more looking at me leniently. 

I began to talk of her. I told how it was five, no, six, 
days since I had seen her. What had happened, how had 
she passed the time ? Did she remember this or that — some 
incident of the week before? You might have thought a 
journey had separated us. At intervals I laughed gently, I 
quivered all over. I shivered with happiness at being near 
her again. 

No, only my jealousy. I was ready to admit it ground- 
less, childish, any name she chose to call it. Only my silly 
jealousy had estranged us for a while, she was not lost to me 
really. She was here, her hand was in mine and I could feel, 
with every breath she drew, her life itself pulsing in her 
wrist. 

She listened to me very pleasantly and smiled now and 
then. 


CHAPTER XXX 


“. . . For love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave, the 
coals thereof are coals of fire that have a most virulent flame.” 

The Song of Solomon. 

Hot until I reached my lodging and saw on my desk the 
Roumistorf’s manuscript addressed to Jacques Colbert, did I 
realise what I had risked that afternoon, the danger I had 
run. The envelope was stamped, sealed — only an oversight 
on the part of the concierge had prevented his posting it. 
My God, if he had done so ! I pictured it all — Colbert’s sur- 
prise, his delight in such a literary windfall as these posthu- 
mous poems. Doubtless he would instantly have shown the 
manuscript to his wife and she, glancing through it would 
have recognised the verses I had claimed and known me for 
what I was — a cheat. 

I caught my breath at the word cheat, thief, liar — I was 
all this and more. I had failed a friend, a dead woman who 
had been kind to me, who had encouraged me, who had kept 
up my self-respect. I had stolen her work. It was a mean 
thing I had done, I would not have believed I had it in me. 
And how easily, how instinctively I had lied. Something in 
Marie-Therese’s voice had called forth my answer. My — 
“Yes,” had been as inevitable, as uncontrollable as a sun- 
stroke or a fit. A second, less than that, had sufficed to make 
a criminal of me. I was pledged to a lie my life through. 

Unless . . . and with a blessed sense of relief I realised 
— that since I had not yet published these poems under my 
name, I need only confess to Marie-Therese, to he a free man 
again. I still could right myself with my conscience. I 
need not carry on this fraud. I was not hound to be a thief. 
Nothing forced me. Besides, where was my self-respect as 

172 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


173 


an artist, what did I want with another’s fame, with the 
praise of another’s work ? — and disconcertingly pat came the 
answer. It was not the world’s good opinion I craved — it 
was a woman’s. To waken Marie-Theresa’s interest a little 
longer, I had lied and would continue lying — it was well 
worth it. I grew elated, already I saw the laurels of fame 
arching over me. Kerlavoz was only a man. My lie might 
make of me a celebrity. 

I determined to carry my theft through head high and at 
once I set to work. I burnt the Princess’s original manu- 
script. Her notes and every scrap of paper where her hand 
had traced a word relative to her poems. There was no fire- 
place in my room. I lit my candle, I held sheet after sheet 
in the flame. As each page blazed, I threw it on the floor, I 
stamped on it. Under my feet the burning paper writhed 
like a live thing, sizzled and twisted as though dying hard. 

Then I wrote to Monsieur Colbert that I hoped the col- 
lection of poems I enclosed might interest him. His wife had 
encouraged me to send him these efforts of mine. And in 
big, firm letters, I signed the copy I had made of the Rou- 
mistorf’s work with my name, Armand de Vaucourt. 

It was already dark when I went out to the post-office. I 
registered the parcel I carried and came hack to my bed. I 
was not hungry, but I drank absinthe and slept late into the 
morrow. 

Every day now I indulged more and more in the opales- 
cent drug. The green fairy gave me courage, hope, insight. 
I needed all my faculties, I told myself. Everything seemed 
to me complicated, difficult, my life had tied itself into a 
knot. It was no longer easy for me to face the simplest 
problem. I could not take a step or open a door without an 
effort of the will. When I saw an acquaintance, I would 
cross the street to avoid him. I dreaded to meet the human 
eye. A morbid terror of my fellow-kind possessed me. I 
was as full of forebodings as a liver patient. The future 
seemed to me big with evil. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


■Lte 

This was as hard a time as I ever went through. What 
between drink and anxiety I was very near to neurasthenia, 
to madness perhaps. My hands trembled constantly and my 
eyes kept filling with tears. Even when I was sober, I stut- 
tered a little and several times I forgot words. 

I would sit outside the Cafe des Anglais while my 
brain worked inordinately fast. Everything I saw or heard 
started a train of thought I could not break away from. The 
pain of thinking was intense, it was an agony to hear and 
see. All my faculties hurt me and I would drink and drink 
to make a beast of myself, to forget, to get away from reality, 
to lose this tenseness in my head, this sense of my skull being 
about to burst. Then when I was stupefied, I would go 
home and lie on my bed. 

I could not sleep and yet I dreamt. A premonition, a 
fearful possibility recurred to me always, the Princess was 
alive. In the desert or on ship-board, under tropical suns or 
in boreal lights, her image turned to me and showed its face. 
Often in my fancy I pictured her travelling home to France 
and gradually I began to believe she was not drowned. The 
sea sometimes gave up its dead. What of desert islands 
where people were lost for years, yet nevertheless lived to 
come home? I had read of just such cases. 

I thought of my mother, too, a great deal during these 
day£. Poor woman, she was ill — according to Ernest she was 
dying. I could do no less than go to her, only I must sober 
up a bit— I must get back my nerve. I could not face her in 
the state I was. 

My anxiety on her score was enhanced by a letter I re- 
ceived. Bernardette wrote me. At sight of her careful writ- 
ing, all imbued still with the spirit of the primer, I thought 
of our childhood together, of how I had watched her learn- 
ing to form her letters. How amusing and pretty she looked, 
her head sleek as a spaniel’s tilted wisely on one side, the 
tip of her tongue between her lips, her eyes big with earnest^ 
ness, with the responsibility of being a good child — and as I 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


175 


tore open the envelope, I smiled to remember how mon- 
strously tall the pen used to seem when she held it, because 
her hand was still so little. 

Bernardette’s letter told me that my mother was indeed 
ill, that she spoke often of her son, it would do her good 
surely, to see him again. 

I wrote to Bernardette to expect me in Tours Tuesday of 
next week. Her news had steadied me. I made my plans to 
leave Paris, got myself an hand and ceased to drink. 

It was strange, hut since I had sacrificed my honour for 
Marie-Therese, for that was the point of view I chose to take 
of my dishonest action, I had not gone near her house. I 
had paid a big price for her interest, for her company, I had 
bribed her to tolerate me a little longer, yet now I avoided 
her. 

Sunday, however, I set out for the Parc Monceau. Ma- 
dame was not at home, the valet informed me, hut Monsieur 
had left orders if I called to show me to his study. What 
did this portend ? I followed the man apprehensively. Had 
Colbert turned jealous by chance ? But the publisher’s greet- 
ing reassured me. It was evident he knew nothing of my re- 
lations with his wife. 

He had sent for me to talk about the poems I had sub- 
mitted to him. He thought them unusual — yes, striking. 
Well, perhaps a little too blatantly inspired by the Princess 
Boumistorf, eh? But well, well, one must not harp. Un- 
conscious imitation was the hall-mark of all young artists. 
He offered me terms that staggered me and agreed to bring 
out in the autumn what he called my “lyrical strophes.” 

He only wished, he added, he need not postpone publish- 
ing my poems for a year, hut unfortunately his press was 
over-crowded. He was glad, he said, to see I had found my- 
self, and to enroll among his authors a young man of — ah, 
well, he meant it — genius. 

I was as pleased as though I deserved his praise. Indeed, 
I had grown to feel that these verses were mine. I knew 


176 


A WOMAN'S MAN 


them by heart. At heart I felt them. I appreciated their 
beauty so intelligently. I was so imbued with their senti- 
ments. A man who could understand these poems as I did, 
could have written them. It was only his had luck if he had 
not 

The conversation lapsed. “How is Madame Colbert ?" I 
asked. 

She was nervous lately, it seemed, and thought of going 
to Nice for her health, and Colbert fatuously enlarged on her 
hypochondriacal fads and eccentricities. With a silly smile, 
peculiar to him when he spoke of his wife, he confided, “Will 
you believe it, she will not let a day go by without consulting 
Dr. — I forget his name — the great specialist of Neuilly? 
She drives out to his hospital sometimes twice an afternoon — 
you know his place — they call it The Hygeia Sanatorium." 

Hygeia, the name was familiar to me ; where had I heard 
it before ? Ah, I remembered, one day when I was boasting 
that I had shot at a man and had hit him and could name 
him by name if I would, some one had told me — a student in 
my lodgings — a fellow who had just served his time in the 
army, that his captain, Comte Kerlavoz, had retired to this — 
yes, Hygeia Sanatorium was the name — to get well of some 
hurt, probably a wound, he hinted, received in a duel. 

The conversation languished. I sat very still staring at 
the pattern of the carpet and Monsieur Colbert pursing his 
lips, talked of the weather, keeping up a tattoo on his blotter 
the while. 

After a pause, I asked, “When is Madame Colbert leav- 
ing for Nice ?" 

“To-morrow — what, are you going already?" 

Outside in the street I hailed a fiacre. I gave the driver 
the address of the hospital at Neuilly. The man stared at me 
curiously, and indeed, I must have been livid if I looked as 
I felt 

“Quick, quicker than this," I cried, and the whip cracked 


A WOMAN’S MAN 177 

over the poor beast between the traces till all the steel of the 
harness jingled as though with panic. 

The nurse who answered my inquiries was able to give 
me a good report of my friend, Monsieur de Kerlavoz. The 
Captain was all hut well again, as I dared to hope. It was 
quite true, as I thought, he was going South — ye3, to-morrow. 
No, not to Cannes, as I suggested, but to Nice. Did I care 
to pay Monsieur le Comte a visit — he had his own sitting- 
room and was always glad to receive his friends. 

“No, no, I will not disturb him hut if I could see the 
lady who is with him.” 

“Oh, yes, his sister.” 

“Quite so, his sister. I will not detain her more than a 
minute. No, I will not send up my card, my name will mean 
nothing to her.” 

I was shown into the waiting-room. How many poor 
devils had paced up and down here as I did now, despairing 
of health as I despaired of happiness. I went from the table 
snowed under with magazines to the empty grate and as I 
passed the window, I saw in the garden the convalescents, the 
shadows of the leaves, translucent green discs, playing on 
their white faces. 

I heard the door open. I turned. Marie-Therese stood 
on the threshold. The preoccupation, the excitement of an 
interrupted talk hovered still in her smile. She looked about 
her near-sightedly narrowing her eyelids and when she saw 
me, “What do you want ?” she asked sharply. 

Nothing that reflects the light is so hard, so cruelly pierc- 
ing as the human eye when love has died out of it. 

I do not know what I said to her. I do not know what 
happened exactly. My impression is of the velvety texture 
of her skirt and of the tips of her two little brown shoes dot- 
ting the red discs that formed the pattern of the carpet. For 
here, in this public room with the door ajar, where from min- 
ute to minute some one might walk in, I san k down before 
this woman. I prayed to her not to give me up, I shed tears, 


178 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


I made a grotesque spectacle of myself, I was unstrung by 
absinthe, half crazed. 

She had the decency to look away from me while inar- 
ticulately I pleaded with her. I could not have endured her 
glance, its chill surprise, its latent animosity. I remember I 
told her I had one prayer. If she would grant it, my life 
could be set right. She must leave Paris, she must come with 
me to Greece, to Egypt, to Italy, perhaps. The eternal wish 
of the lover rose to my lips — to travel to strange countries, 
new horizons, and there keep the beloved secreted, hold her 
jealously against the world. 

Her silence was almost compassionate and I understood 
how farcical was my prayer, how grotesque. I had not 
enough money to take her with me, nor she enough love to go. 

In the face of this fashionable woman, her hair mar- 
celled, irreproachably gloved, my offer seemed like sarcasm, 
like irony. She was leaning now on the mantel in a cavalier 
fashion — one hand on the marble, the other playing with a 
chain of trinkets. 

“Marie-Therese, where is the medal you used to wear — 
the one I gave you ?” 

She shrugged her shoulders — probably she did not know 
and was too indifferent to lie. 

This medal was one of two I had had made. I had kept 
its fellow, it meant to me the cabalistic sign of our passion — 
I told her so. 

She let me talk myself out — then, “You silly boy,” she 
said and prosaically handed me my hat. “You will never 
grow up,” she gibed in a not unkindly manner. 

I looked at her once more — she was smiling, and I went 
away from her. 

As I passed through the streets, jostled by the Sunday 
crowds, by a perspiring, jovial humanity let loose in the sun 
for a holiday, I decided to die. Not that I suffered exactly. 
The miserable creature I had just left was not worth a re^ 
gret — I told myself so. Only somehow she had managed to 


A WOMAN’S MAN 179 

drain me of all zest, all hope. She had taken the flavour out 
of the world, she had cured me of my taste for life. 

Before my plan could he carried out, the dawn was cring- 
ing along the facade of the house opposite my window. The 
saffron light was gaining in the street, inching down to the 
pavement. How day after day had I endured the sight of 
these blistered stones split as though with fever, worn by the 
feet of strangers, of aliens. An inhospitable place,, the world 
— I had never felt at home here. I was not like Kerlavoz, 
one of the fortunate of the earth who mould life to their 
liking, but one need not be successful, strong, dearly loved 
to die. Any one can pull a trigger. 

On my desk I laid a letter addressed to my mother. It 
was the same I had written her the night before my duel. 

Then I re-read a page I held in my hand. On a foolscap 
sheet I had told Marie-Therese good-bye in the best language 
I knew. A certain satisfaction warmed me as I perused my 
work. For the artist in us dies hard. I wrote her that dy- 
ing because of her, through her, I had perhaps earned a 
different place in her life from that of the other men she had 
loved and would love, and from my grave, I might keep a 
hold on her thoughts such as I had not had when I was alive 
and adored her. I put this letter in my pocket, I wanted it 
found on my body. 

I drew open the drawer of my desk and felt for the pistol 
I had bought before my duel. My hand slipped on a glossy 
surface. I threw the thing, whatever it was, on to the table. 
It proved to be a photograph, a likeness of Bemardette. She 
had given it me herself and I had flung it in my desk four 
years ago, the day Marie-Therese had come to me here for 
the first time. 

The picture showed a girl — no, something more sedate, 
a maiden rather, more a child still than a woman, seated in a 
wicker chair, very much in her best clothes, her head caught 
in a sort of brace such as photographers use to steady the pose 
and fondly imagine invisible. Bernardette was smiling be- 


180 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


cause she had been asked to smile, hut for all this, her eyes 
kept an encouraging and friendly look as though to say, “In 
spite of being so dressed up, this is I — don’t you remember 
me?” 

Long and earnestly I studied the photograph. It was 
somewhat faded, the contour of the face was uncertain, 
wraith-like, and I fell to thinking that I might have married 
this young girl, that my life might have been different. 

Then it was I conceived and carried out what I think was 
a crima The vagaries of the senses, the changes of heart, 
the betrayal of vows, caprice, lust, satiety, it may be all this 
is excusable in the malady of fever and ague we name love, 
in the flux and reflux of this sentimental malaria. But from 
sex to sex there is one wrong always committed in cold blood 
and which can hope for no pardon — to bear false witness of 
one’s heart, to take the name of love in vain, to say, “I love 
you,” where no love is felt. This is the unforgivable sin, the 
cruelest lie one human being can tell another. 

I looked, I say, long and earnestly at Bemardette’s like- 
ness and all at once it occurred to me that instead of dying I 
could rivet Marie-Therese’s attention by quite other tactics. 
My death would surprise her certainly, intrigue her perhaps, 
but then to die was to always confess myself hers. Suppose 
I married instead. Married in haste before next week was 
out as though in the white heat of a new passion. Married 
a girl with money, not bad looking, and who thought me per- 
fect. Might not MarierTherese be startled by my buoyant 
independence, my fling into matrimony, amazed to find she 
had not broken my heart, piqued, interested, who knows? 

I destroyed my letter to her then and my letter to my 
mother. I wrote to Bernardette instead; I told the girl I 
cared for her, that in spite of my neglect of her, I always had 
cared for her. I asked if she was willing to marry me still, 
if she was fond enough of me. 

I had become so proficient in protestations, in tender 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


181 


words, I had so loved one woman that now in writing of 
love to another, I found the phrases that ring true. 

To bind myself irrevocably I lost no time but posted my 
letter. Then 1 flung myself on the bed dressed. It was full 
daylight by now, the window unshuttered. With the sun on 
my face, I slept soundly, sanely, as I had not for many a 
night. 


CHAPTER XXXI 


“I go the way of the earth; be thou strong and show thyself a 
man.” 

Kings I. 

“I will call them my people which are not my people and her, 
beloved, which was not beloved.” 

Romans. 

It seemed to me I had but closed my eyes when a sharp 
rap at my door startled me. “A telegram, Monsieur,” and 
still dazed with sleep I took from the concierge the blue 
slip. 

My first thought was of Marie-Th^rese. She had repented 
of what she had made me suffer. She had sent me a message 
to keep my soul and body together. I actually trembled as 
I tore open the envelope and the print jigged before my eyes. 

At first I could not take in the meaning of the words. 
They read, “Come at once, Madame is dying, Yvonne.” 

Madame Colbert was dying. She would he lost to me ir- 
revocably. She could never come hack to me from death as 
from her lovers. My ineradicable hope of making her mine 
again was vain. But who was Yvonne to send me this fear- 
ful message? Yvonne? The name brought- memories of 
Tours, of the Rue Rationale, of home, and all at once I 
realised that it was our old servant who had telegraphed me, 
that it was for my mother she pleaded, my mother who was 
dying, who was dead perhaps by now. 

In the panting of the engine, in its pulsing and leaping, 
I read the frenzied hurry of the train, straining to outrace 
death, death that rushed along the track leaving the trees 
dishevelled in its wake. Death that raced the express and 
meant to reach Tours first 


182 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


183 ' 


Our house was much as I remembered it. Very still, 
imbued with a brooding peace. The glass lantern still hung 
from the hall ceiling and in it a taper floating in oil drifted, 
blown by the breeze from the open door. 

I glanced into the parlour as I passed. It looked just as 
when my mother and I had spun out our evenings there to- 
gether, only now two figures stood near the table — Monsieur 
and Madame Anselme, I thoughtj and a third shape leant by 
the mantel, a stranger, the doctor, I suspected. 

A new servant had let me in, but old Yvonne greeted me 
half way up the stairs. She held the candle on a level with 
her face. I saw her eyes inflamed as two wounds, scorched 
as though she had shed all the tears left her. 

I opened my mother’s door and in this room I remem- 
bered so fragrant, so cloistered, where as a child I had never 
entered without knocking, I discerned on the bolster a pale 
splotch, a human head of an awful colour, a livid grey. 

The poor woman felt me bending over her, her sealed eyes, 
her sealed lips broke open at my touch, her love found voice. 

“Armand, Armand, my boy, my dear boy.” 

Through the night I sat beside her. I think she wanted 
to live. Her hand clung pitifully to mine. I knew it was 
for me she was afraid to die, for me so weak, so pliable, and 
so dependent, rather than for herself. 

In spite of my sorrow, I drowsed now and then, drugged 
by the atmosphere of the room, by the clogged odour of 
medicaments, of incense and melting candles. 

In the corner by the prie-dieu, Monsieur le Cure droned. 
At moments his prayer slipped to a sibilant whisper, then to 
silence, and I sensed rather than heard the pit-pat of a light 
foot passing in the shadow beyond the bed. I looked up, a 
woman’s figure was hovering, soft moving as though blown 
on a breath, ministering to my mother. Bernardette ! 

Between the candles on the table, in a saucer, floated a 
sprig of box. On the bed my mother’s shawl lay in fami- 
liar folds, shaped to the shoulders it had draped, to the breast 


184 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


it had kept warm for years. Poor woman, poor, poor mother ! 
If only I had proved myself a better son. Dying she had re- 
gained me for a while, for a moment I was her child again. 
She conld have made of me now, for a time at least, the man 
she wanted me to be. 

Perhaps she knew it for in the dawn, in an unearthly 
voice, she called me by name. Her cold fingers closed over 
mine and she gave my hand into the keeping of a hand 
smaller than mine pulsing with life, warm and soft as a 
caress — a woman’s hand. 

In a voice eerie with weakness, my mother told Bernar- 
dette and me to love, help, cherish each other, to be dependent 
one on the other for our happiness. She smiled on us both, 
adoringly. She said something else unintelligible to us; it 
was like a blessing in a foreign tongue, in a strange, divine 
language. And slipping from my arms onto the bed, she fell 
back into the hollow where she had lain, but an instant be- 
fore, when she still breathed. 

It was not alone my mother that I mourned. It was my 
boyhood, a bit of my youth gone with her irrevocably. Our 
real self is in the hearts of those who love us. We live in 
their memory, their tender thoughts, and when they die, they 
take with them a part of our being. 

Through the day, I kept watch in the mortuary room. A 
sheet covered my mother. Death had made her face unfa- 
miliar — I did not look at it, but I thought of our life together, 
of incidents that only she and I knew and could have smiled 
over in common. My boyhood was lost in her, lost all the 
happy years before I grew up. 

Once a man, I had meant to do great things for my 
mother. I had promised her and yet now, see, I had let her 
die unsatisfied. 

The formalities of the funeral were mostly undertaken by 
Monsieur Anselme. He was the most competent of men, he 
would have found time to direct the stars in their courses 
were it possible. A rooted antipathy flourished between us. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


185 


He and his material success were hateful to me, while he, I 
know, nourished for me a wholesome contempt. A crack- 
brained failure he thought me, driven to marriage for a live- 
lihood. I never felt so small as under the glare of his eye — 
that eye of his that had bullied finance! He would stand 
straddle-legged before me, lowering at me, his hand in his 
pocket jingling the product of his will, of his brain — his 
massive jaw sunk on his chest. To justify myself to him 
was useless. To such as he nothing fails like failure. He 
was not the man to understand that the success of an artist 
is only a fortunate accident, a stroke of good luck. The 
genius is not proved by his bank-book nor by his laurels 
either, alas. 

Madame Anselme nevertheless, kept for me her most 
motherly, her kindest smila She said Bernardette might 
fare farther for a husband and fare worse and she hacked 
her statement with praise of me. All her compliments, how- 
ever, meant this merely — the good lady believed her daughter 
loved me. 

Perhaps, too, it may be, my desolate aspect at the funeral, 
my loss of appetite, my drawn face and black coat touched 
Madame Anselme. She may have thought I had bought back 
by tears my neglect of my mother, my desertion of home, all 
the suffering I had wantonly inflicted. At any rate the 
marriage was settled for the thirtieth of the month, the end 
of May, the banns already called and Monsieur le Maire 
interviewed. 

I had only two weeks in which to do my courting. I set 
to work with a will. Perhaps, had you asked me then, I 
would have told you I was not happy, that the loss of my 
mother had shattered me, that I regretted Paris, that the 
discordant thought of Marie-Therese haunted me, that I 
was not born to be the fiance of a provincial little girl in 
starched muslin. Certainly I would not have confessed to 
the sense of well-being that saturated me through and through 
when I lay late abed of mornings, when Yvonne fed me with 


186 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


dainties or when I rode out through the country all atuned to 
June to my Bernardette’s house. She would come to the 
gate and we would lean across it like lovers in an old song. 

Bernardette was not afraid to he looked at in the sun- 
shine. She was shyer, in fact, in the evening — in the dusk 
when I could hardly see her face. At night we spent deli- 
cious hours walking up and down the lawn while a bland, 
incurious moon now and then showed its indulgent face be- 
tween the trees. 

Bernardette was allowed to take my arm. Often Mon- 
sieur and Madame Anselme lost track of us for a while in 
the fragrant gloom of the garden. When alone, we would 
walk on somewhat stiffly — my fiancee and I, side by side. 
We rarely spoke, twigs cracked under our feet, birds chirped 
drowsily. All the scents, all the oppressive sweetness of the 
night, seemed to penetrate me through every pore. I could* 
feel Bernardette breathing by the rise and fall of her shoul- 
der against my arm, and gradually a sort of languor gained 
over me, and I felt as though buoyed up on ether, light and 
weak as in a convalescence. Why ? Because I was happy — 
that was why, hut without knowing it, for happiness is an 
angel entertained often unawares. 

I told myself I did not love Bernardette and assuredly I 
did not if what I had known for Marie-Therese was love. 
Certainly I never felt again for any woman the same trans- 
ports, tempestuous heart-beats, gnawing jealousies, hot and 
cold fits. I admitted to myself, however, that I thought Ber- 
nardette pretty, that I believed we looked well together, that 
I liked to have her seen at my side, her arm slipped through 
mine. Besides I was not proof against the fact that she loved 
me or thought she did, for the senses of a young girl speak 
in ignorance, her passion is a sentiment all made of contra- 
dictions, of divine expansion and instinctive recoil. Possi- 
bly it is only a fairy love she feels, the tintinnabulation of 
romance, or else it may be that the call of the mate, the call of 


A WOMAN’S MAN 187 

the species is already in her heart, that embryo heart of hers 
unconscious still of its force and needs. 

Perhaps you would like to know of what favour Bernar- 
dette was, into what manner of girlhood she had grown. How 
shall I describe her ? Think how you would have a daughter 
look — -picture innocence — a dove — Marguerite coming out of 
church when Goethe first tells us of her. Visualise all the 
sweetest, if most hackneyed, symbols of the poets. Well, just 
so was my little fiancee. 

The days slipped by and gradually the thought of Marie- 
Therese preyed on me less. I grew better of my love-fever, 
I ceased to drink absinthe, once more I lived sanely and my 
mind found its balance again. To he sure though, I did not 
quite forget Madame Colbert; I had written telling her of 
my coming marriage, hut had received no answer. At times 
the thought of her stabbed me full in the heart and then in- 
consequently enough, I would turn to my fiancee and press 
her hand and hazard some compliment coining perhaps the 
very words I might have used to Mari&Therese. 

Tours thought me a devoted lover. I made my peace 
with the town. I was accepted as a sober citizen, a man 
whose future was assured. Monsieur Godot paid me a visit 
of congratulation and Ernest, very much the father, came 
to call, carrying his first-born — the child had proved a 
daughter after all — and Ernest was inordinately proud of 
the red, wrinkled bundle whimpering in his arms. I do not 
know how much of my friend’s parental exuberance was 
assumed. I suspected him of building up his practice on a 
display of domestic virtue. 

My mother had never trusted Ernest and had refused his 
services in her last illness. Whether the slight rankled with 
him or no, he was too clever to show resentment. He wrung 
my hand heartily and quite won my confidence by his dis- 
play of good will. I exclaimed over his baby though as a 
matter of fact, it did not differ from any baby, while he 
played the fatuous father for me, and very well he did it. 


188 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


Indeed now since I had seen him beam over his infant, his 
spectacles aglow with tenderness, I was almost tempted to 
accept from his hand any pill or draught. 

Yes, the days slipped by, hour by hour I passed them 
with Bemardette. I grew dependent on her companionship, 
on her laugh of appreciation — the cooing laugh of the woman 
who loves and that no flattery can imitate. The feel of her 
little hands became essential to me, her blushes were my 
day’s event. I grew fond of her dark-lashed eyelids that 
fluttered down at a word, and the soft pit-pat of her little 
slippered feet grew dear to me. 

For her sake, I took to the provincial mode of life. Every 
Sunday I attended the Anselmes to Mass. I visited the gen- 
try rigorously and often played tric-trac or backgammon of 
an evening till a soothing cup of tilleul or camomile, or, if my 
taste prompted, orgeat or fleur d’oranger, broke up the party, 
and never in all the time of my courtship did I hear the clock 
strike twelve, for every night I was in bed an hour before 
midnight and asleep. I was content and led a tranquil, 
soporific life. 

I 1 liked the afternoons best Bemardette and I passed the 
still, sunny hours from mid-day to evening in her garden. 
We had found a secluded comer between a jungle of currant- 
bushes and a flowering space. A bench was set here and 
foliage sheltered us on every side, brushed against our shoul- 
ders and rustled. Madame Anselme, the most indulgent of 
chaperones, always to he found under a certain sycamore doz- 
ing and embroidering and dozing again, could not see us for 
the tall plants about us — the gay, crude larkspur and the 
hollyhocks, stiff and formal as cotillon favours. In the sum- 
mer-house of living green, in this blowing, fragrant arbour, 
variegated lights played over Bemardette’s white dress, flicks 
of colour danced like butterflies over her pretty arms and her 
lace mittens. 

I remember I once told her to take off her hat, it hid too 
much of her face. Under its brim I could only see her 


A WOMAN’S MAN- 


189 


mouth, where childhood lurked still, and her babyish chin. 
She obeyed me. The sun shone on her hair and I drew her 
to me and kissed her as I had not dared to before. 

The other woman, the one I loved, when I used to hold 
her in my arms, I felt I held the whole world — the acme of 
sensation, of vital pleasure. Now, it was only a young girl 
my arms were clasped about — a young girl, fresh as a rose, 
fragrant with youth and Indian muslin. 

“That was a real kiss,” she said and the way she said it 
both touched me and made me want to laugh, and I looked 
away for fear she should read my thoughts. 


CHAPTER XXXII 


“Be ashamed of unjust dealing before thy partner and friend." 

Ecclesiasticus. 

Italy was the country where Bernardette and I passed 
our honeymoon, the city, Venice. I had thought to come 
here because of what Marie-Therese had once said. She had 
told me how, when she was first grown, her parents had 
brought her to this enchanted haven and all at once in this 
air, pulsing with music, heat and languor, where the heart 
stirs and flutters for a nothing, there had been revealed to 
her the meaning of the romances she had read in secret and 
of the passionate poems she had not understood. 

I had never forgotten she loved Venice. How I found 
the place interwoven with thoughts of her. To pass through 
the lagoons in a hooded gondola with a woman and yet not 
with her, seemed strange to me. 

All our people at home thought Bernardette graver, more 
self-contained when I brought her hack to Tours. I resented 
their comments. Was it my fault if my wife was quiet, 
reserved — well, difficult to talk to? Because I was not al- 
ways at her side, holding her hand, rhapsodising on love, did 
that mean I was not fond of her ? Hot at all. I was very 
attached to her, we got on well together. In the last six 
weeks, when there had been no relief from each other’s com- 
pany, never one hard word had been spoken between us. 

If I seemed abstracted, listless, the truth was I was wor- 
ried. Yes, I was fretting, and somewhat for Bernardette’s 
sake. Since I had married her, since I had learned how de- 
voted she was to me and to my cause in life, how entirely 
she believed in me and in the soundness of the future I meant 
to build for us both, there had settled on me a sense of self- 

190 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


191 


dissatisfaction, of shame almost. By what right had I asked 
this young girl to take my name when already I had signed 
away the virtue of my name, sworn my signature to another’s 
work. Though the Princess Boumistorf was dead, though 
my sin would never come to light, I was a fraud nevertheless 
and the home I offered Bernardette was founded on a lie. I 
should have liked for her sake to start our life together with 
a clean record. I wanted the career I had promised to make 
for her to be grounded at least on my own efforts, my own 
work. I seriously entertained the thought of asking Mon- 
sieur Colbert for the Boumistorf’s poems and under pretext 
of revising the manuscript, I decided to destroy it. 

With this move in view, I hurried Bernardette away 
from Tours to Paris, to our apartment in the Bue Saint 
Louis en Lille. Monsieur Anselme’s money and Madame 
Anselme’s taste had furnished our home. I have always 
been subject to my surroundings, dependent on material ob- 
jects, mentally influenced by them, inspired by some rooms, 
unable to work in others. 

At first I found the new suite uncongenial, stultifying to 
the imagination, till Bernardette, somehow harmonised the 
place. She moved a chair here, drew a curtain there, laid 
a bowl of flowers on a table, hung a plant at the window 
and lo! where varnish and gilt, upholstery and angles had 
been before, comfort, sweet concord, held sway. I felt that 
at last I had a home of my own. To give to a room with a 
northern outlook the sun of a southern exposure, to put a 
set of furniture into tune as it were and make the charm, 
the poetry of home hold between four walls, is the genius 
of women. 

The first of J anuary was the date for the publication of 
the poems supposed to be mine. By now, September had be- 
gun. If I wanted to keep the manuscript out of press, I had 
no time to lose. 

The second morning after my arrival in Paris, I set out 
for the Parc Monceau. From habit perhaps, my heart began 


192 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


to throb at sight of the white fagade of Madame Colbert’s 
house. The same valet opened the door, and in answer to 
my questions informed me that Monsieur Colbert was in his 
study and would receive me since my business was urgent. 

I cut short the publisher’s greeting and his congratula- 
tions on my marriage by questions about himself. I asked 
formally after his wife for fear he should think it strange I 
did not mention her name. She was back from Nice, the 
better for her trip, Colbert thought — indeed, she seemed too 
energetic, if anything, he opined, too feverishly animated. 
Night and day always on the go, ultimately the social round 
must wear her to pieces. “She has so many friends, she is 
so popular,” I agreed and lapsed a moment into silence 
forgetting what I had come to say. 

The room was suffocatingly warm, a brass calorifere 
gaped on either side of the door. The lilies in a tripod on the 
desk drooped over-sweet, and the close room was impregnated 
by the odour of Marie-Therese’s perfume — burnt amber and 
musk. As though following the drift of my thoughts, “She 
was here a moment ago,” Colbert said and he added inconse- 
quently, “the season is almost over fortunately. With all 
this rushing about, she has grown thin, you will see. Why, it 
must be three months since you were here.” 

“Five months and five days,” I answered, and drawing 
my chair to his desk, I explained for what I had come. 

I briefly stated that I wanted back the poems signed by 
my name. I had thought of corrections to make, cuts, 
changes. I wished to revise the verses. I stuttered a little, 
floundering in my speech. I was in a hurry, I was eager to 
be gone. I was not anxious to have Madame Colbert come 
in and find me here. I rather dreaded seeing her again. 

“Mon Dieu,” Colbert objected as I finished my plea, “all 
you authors are the same. You drive us publishers to dis- 
traction with your divine discontent. No, no, my dear boy, a 
revised work is a work spoiled. I want the vigour, the vi- 
tality of first intention — only — ” and he paused to flick off 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


19 ? 

the ash of his cigarette with a manicured, chalky-white finger- 
nail. “Only I could have wished to introduce you to the 
public by means of a novel and not poetry, an u nk nown poet 
is the very devil to boom. Now have you any romance you 
could submit to me, eh ? Even a short story, possibly I could 
bring it out in place of your poems as a beginning.” 

“No, I have written one novel only. I showed it to Ma- 
dame Colbert, you may remember. She said it was poor — I 
have never looked at it since. I don’t even know where it is. 
Monsieur Colbert, I must ask you for those poems.” 

“Well, well, of course, if your heart is set on it, you shall 
have your manuscript back, only if so, mind you, the publi- 
cation of your poems must be postponed until the spring.” 

Let their publication be eternally postponed was my se- 
cret prayer. Let these verses I had so fraudulently appro- 
priated never see the light. I breathed again, I felt I had 
escaped a danger. “Monsieur Colbert, thank you.” 

Good, excellent, the thing was settled and I turned to go. 

I had not heard the door open, yet Marie*-Therese stood at 
my elbow and held out her hand to me. She appeared taller 
even than I remembered, startlingly blonde, radiantly white 
like a pagan goddess, dizzily overpowering, and I remember 
it passed through my mind how strange it seemed to have to 
look up like this to meet a woman’s eyes. I suppose uncon- 
sciously, I had grown accustomed to glancing down into my 
wife’s face, for Bernardette was a good head shorter than I 
and when we stood side by side, her dark hair just reached 
to my lips. 

“Well, how is our bridegroom ?” asked Marie-Therese in 
her deep, hoarse, disconcerting voice. She fitted her hand 
into mine, and the old sensations she alone had the power to 
rouse in me, the heart storms and the unwholesome curiosity 
woke under the pressure of her strong fingers. 

Colbert, elaborately flippant, was the first to speak. “Ha, 
ha, there’s a young fellow needs a thorough talking to. You 
should scold him, Marie-Therese, and hard, too.” 


194 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


“Ah, scold him? — why yes, of course I will,” and she 
stood smiling at me, her hand still in mine. I noticed the 
pucker at either corner of her rouged mouth, and for the first 
time a glint of gold and dimmed enamel between her lips. 
She has grown older, I thought, and I experienced a relief at 
not finding her as potently attractive as I remembered her. 

“Of course I will scold him, what has he done ?” and she 
dropped my hand suddenly and strayed across the room, her 
skirt clinging to her thighs, her train swimming after her. 
She wore a dress I remembered, the comb in her hair was 
familiar to me. 

Colbert complained of my obstinacy in asking back the 
poems. He talked like a book urging his wife to convince me 
of the folly of revising my manuscript at the cost of the 
spring trade. 

She was of his mind, or pretended to be, and came behind 
me with persuasive words, wheedling, deliciously depreca- 
tory as I had never known her before. Why? Not that she 
cared, I imagine — no, she was sublimely indifferent, I doubt 
not, as to what I chose to publish or what I chose to throw 
to the paper-basket. Only it was her habit to tamper with 
the future of her intimates, to revolutionise the principles of 
whomsoever she could. She would corrupt a man if possi- 
ble, if not she would convert him. At any rate she would 
work to undermine his convictions, persuade him to act 
against his theories and leave her stigma on his life. 

Now I never doubted I should do what she asked. Nev- 
ertheless I put up the semblance of an argument. I pointed 
out the advantage of presenting myself to the public as a 
novelist and not a poet, and I sketched the plot of a story, a 
romance I meant to write. The scenario had occurred to me 
in Venice; spontaneously like a dream I had talked the idea 
over with Bernardette. I remember, one azure day when we 
were drifting in a boat sunning ourselves — she and I — on the 
Adriatic . . . 

Somehow, though, now, when I tried to tell my story a 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


195 


second time, I could not find the words to make my fancies 
vital. The first glow of inspiration was lost, my narrative 
rang false, sounded incoherent, drivelling, and Marie-Therese 
shrugged over it. 

“I can’t think why you won’t accept success when you 
can have it,” she said. “There is fame, I tell you, in those 
poems of yours.” And suddenly without compromise, I 
heard myself promise not to take hack the manuscript in 
verse, not to revise it, but to let it go to press immediately. 

“Well, well, Marie-Therese, my congratulations. It 
needed your eloquence to convince him. By the way, young 
man, are you and your wife free Friday for dinner?” 

I accepted Colbert’s invitation. 

“Madame de Vaucourt — ha, ha, there’s some one we want 
to meet,” jubilated the publisher rubbing his hands, “eh, 
Marie-Therese ?” 

“Indeed yes,” she assented. 

I looked hard at her as I bade her good-bye. I looked 
with intention. She must not believe she could dominate me 
as in the past, or that she kept any power over me still. “She 
has crow’s feet about her eyes when she smiles,” I thought, 
“I will remember that.” 

These were not the streets I used to pass on my way home 
from her house. I took to the left now instead of the right, 
I sojourned in a better neighbourhood now than the Latin 
quarter. I had gone up in the world. Mark the sculptured 
porte-cochere of the house where I lived and where the con- 
cierge met me hat in hand. 

“Monsieur will lunch here? Madame was just this in- 
stant asking after Monsieur.” 

“Madame ?” 

“Yes, Monsieur,” and as I still stared at the man, “yes 
— Madame, the wife of Monsieur.” 

“Ah,” I said, and went slowly up the stairs to the haven 
of domesticity where I was anchored. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


“She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.” 

Proverbs. 

A while ago, sorting some papers, I put my hand on an 
old note-book, a shabby memoranda. It fell open at my 
touch and I read where I looked down. I read of people who 
are dead by now, of events I had forgotten. I read late into 
the night. It was a diary I had found, a testimony to some 
ten years of a life, my own careless script of the past. I had 
mislaid this journal and with it I had somewhat forgotten 
my mode of thought, the manner of man I used to be. It is 
coincidental — if I am to write graphically, sincerely, — that I 
should come across this old tell-tale, I shall quote from it 
here and there whatever serves to tell my story. 

I begin with the account of the Colberts’ dinner, of that 
Bacchic function where my wife was introduced to the world, 
where I presented her to the pomps of Paris, to the intrigues 
of Bohemia and to Marie-Therese. It proved a red-letter 
meal. 

September 13 , 1885. The stigma of the provinces! It 
takes an exceptional woman, certainly to throw off the effects 
of the home dressmaker, the seamstress by the day. But 
with a full purse and all the Rue de la Paix at her disposal, 
I feel Bernardette might have made a better showing. How- 
ever, no one seemed to think she looked as — what shall I call 
it — sedately correct, as quaintly old-fashioned as I thought 
she did. 

I remember when Marie Therese and I would stop in at 
the Maison Doree , mondaines and demi-mondaines gasped at 
sight of her opera-cloak. I felt, with that woman’s arm in 

196 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


197 


mine, like a celebrity. She gratified all my cravings. She 
has the genius of clothes. I know for a fact Paquin dresses 
her at cost. I don’t wonder — with her figure she advertises 
what she wears. Her clothes and she conspire together. 
What an eye for colour she has ! Her dress to-night was lyri- 
cal, the shades of it sang together, melted, blended like the 
secret tints of the flesh. I like that pallor of hers, whether 
it is due to bismuth or no, that heavy, moist pallor of the 
camellia, an enchantress bleached by the moon was never 
paler, nor Medea gathering nocturnal herbs. I noticed again 
to-night in the groove of her upper lip a. dew of perspiration ; 
it should be sweet and poisonous as the sweat of Salome 
after she danced before Herod. I wonder what Marie- 
Therese thought of Bernardette ! 

Little Bernardette was pitifully out of place — her hand 
in its new glove trembled on my arm, fluttered like a poor 
bird. Just before I led her into the salon, she asked me in a 
whisper if Colbert was not the best publisher in Paris. I felt 
sorry for her, she is such a child. Prom the nursery to the 
cloister and then never out of maman’s shadow — what a 
training for the social melee ! 

The usual court to-night to whom Marie-Therese plays 
Egeria! She has a fresh poet in tow. Evidently Kerlavoz 
has made his exit. Among the guests an academician and a 
Hebrew journalist whose nose only has stayed thin, also sev- 
eral lyrical ladies with the foibles of Sappho but not her 
genius. 

Colbert took Bernardette in to dinner ; they are congenial 
apparently; he paid her considerable attention. I think he 
puts store by me to judge from her account of the conversa- 
tion. She held forth on my childhood — at any rate, she did 
not bore him. She flattered him, I suspect, for he seemed 
pleased with her. She is more wily than I believed, but as 
Schopenhauer says : “Dissimulation is innate in women and 
almost as characteristic of the very stupid as of the very 
clever.” Why she should want to attract Colbert, I don’t 


198 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


profess to understand. It is evident, however, that in the 
provinces she has studied the tailors’ advertisements to ad- 
vantage. She recognises and admires a well-dressed dummy 
when she sees it. The taste of women, what an inexplicable 
problem — the riddle that keeps the world rolling. 

I confess these literary banquets incline me never again 
to put pen to paper for, suppose by some fluke I should suc- 
ceed and become like Colbert’s other guests, a celebrity full of 
platitudes and self-sufficiency — but no, I could never be a 
popular author — no, nor an academician. I have not that 
mediocrity of mind that makes for success. Besides the art- 
ist is tied to fortune’s wheel, his fame is dependent not on 
himself, but on some mysterious conspiracy of the planets, 
and Luck, that fairy godmother, was not at my christening. 
If it were not for this mystical power we cannot cope with, 
for the fatality that hangs over the artist, every genius could 
make a name, he need but write piffle. But no, fallacy— it is 
only certain piffle that succeeds — what I may call predes- 
tined piffle — blessed piffle. 

Talking of piffle, we heard some to-night. The promis- 
ing young poet gave us a taste of his quality after dinner. In 
his verses the moon figured largely. One hand in his waist- 
coat, he apostrophised a rubber plant while the ladies crooned 
over him. Every time he stopped for breath — “Ah,” sighed 
they all round the circle while their fans fluttered to and fro 
like the wings of wounded birds. 

The presence of a celebrity inebriates women, it acts on 
them like champagne. The pleasure they take in the arts is 
sensuous — not intellectual, they are incapable of artistic 
judgment, for again to quote Schopenhauer: “One would be 
more justified in calling women the unsesthetic sex — neither 
for music nor for poetry, nor for the fine arts have they any 
real or true sense or susceptibility and it is mere mockery on 
their part, in their desire to please, if they affect any such 
thing.” Yes, it is their desire to please that causes them to 
swoon over a few vapid iambics, and to please what? — a 


A WOMAN’S MAN 199 

stunted, misshapen young man whose name they have read 
in the papers. 

During our poet’s apotheosis, I stood hy the portiere in 
a draught. I observed, with ironical delight, the rows of 
heads, all this flower garden of women sway in a mock ecstasy 
out of rhythm with the verse. Bon Dieu ! and we are sup- 
posed to venerate this sex. Oh, I admit gladly that God has 
made, in some cases, nothing prettier. But can any right- 
thinking man respect the females of his kind after he has 
seen the blockheads, the barbers’ blocks, the scoundrels and 
fools, the male monstrosities that women appropriate and 
cherish ?' To he sure though their attentions, their coquetries 
are not always actuated hy their native had taste, hut hy the 
spirit of rivalry that animates them. If women were not so 
anxious to eclipse, to impress each other, they would pay less 
attention to men. I shall write a hook and show them up, 
not that one of them in a million would understand or appre- 
ciate my purpose — it would need a brain for that, and the 
intellectual woman is a phenomenon, an abnormality. The 
proof of this is that women of genius have either hy their 
morals or their faces approached to monsters. 

The lyrical orgy told on my nerves ultimately. I saun- 
tered into the dining-room, it was the hour of coffee, liqueurs 
and cigars. Our good host had gone upstairs, ushering a 
batch of his guests, hut enough of the Colbert habitues were 
left about the mahogany to form a scandalous syndicate. I 
found these gentlemen criticising their publisher, his firm 
and his wife. I soon got wind of Marie-Therese’s last affair 
— affair of the heart or so-called in polite society. Kerlavoz 
has been ordered hack to Verdun — so much for his non-ap- 
pearance. Humour accredits the poet his successor hut ac- 
counts do not coincide; I doubt it somehow. 

To-night reminiscing over a cigar, I heard on the floor 
above feet passing and re-passing. I tried to recognise Marie- 
Therese’s step. After a while I turned restless. I wan- 
dered up to the salon, skirted a crowd about the poet, a melee 


■200 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


battling to shake him by the hand. By some coincidence I 
found Madame Colbert apart from the others, for the moment 
alone. She had snapped her fan and leaning on the table in 
the golden disc thrown by a lamp, she was fitting together the 
pieces, playing with the ivory sticks. I drew a chair to her 
side, she wore a dress woven of incandescent stuff and where 
her knees made two folds in the down-sweep of her skirt, 
high lights broke effulgent. 

“Your wife is charming,” she said, shooting an enigmatic 
glance. 

“Very charming,” I assented, and we both looked to 
where Bernardette and Jacques Colbert were still absorbed 
in talk. I remember thinking, “She is pretty, all the same, 
this Bernardette, with her head held on one side like a tame 
pigeon.” 

“Yes, your wife is charming,” Marie-Therese repeated, 
bending over her fan, and the golden down on her neck spar- 
kled like metal. 

“And your poet,” I hazarded, “a human nightingale, 
nothing less, but a trifle of a poseur, is he not ? A. little af- 
fected ?” 

“Ah, that’s the fault of poets — all poets are affected. At 
least all that I know — except one.” 

“Who is that, Madame ?” I asked, longing to take the fan 
from her and feel where her hands had touched it. 

“Yourself,” and she dropped the fan. 

Simultaneously we both leant forward to pick it up. She 
was so close to me that her face seemed out of focus, and for 
an instant her eyes appeared to touch each other — to join, 
her blue-green irises seemed to run together and to melt into 
one great eye staring Cyclops-like over the root of her nose. 

“Yes, his name is Armand de Vaucourt,” she said and 
drew away from me. Her face came into perspective, I saw 
her again as I remembered her, as I had thought of her so 
often. 

During the drive home, I made an unpleasant discovery. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


201 


It seems Bernardette lias taken her role of the literary man’s 
"wife seriously. She wants to help her husband and all that. 
I told her the fable of the fly on the coach-wheel, and asked 
her not to concern herself again with my career. What busi- 
ness of hers are my literary affairs % How dare she meddle 
with them ! She has taken an unwarrantable liberty and so 
I told her. For the first time, I scolded her roundly. She 
never said a word. I think she is going to be the very devil 
to manage. She kept her eyelids down and buried her chin 
in her swansdown cloak. Street-lamp after street-lamp 
flashed by and showed her all in white like a conventional an- 
gel — she is so obstinately saintly, I could have shaken her. 
If she would only content herself with being pretty which she 
is — cloyingly so, and not manage my life. 

It was by accident I discovered what she was contriving 
this evening. I was teasing her about Colbert. I told her 
her tete-a-tete with him was the scandal of the dinner, and 
that Madame Colbert would be jealous soon. Of course she 
took what I said literally — she has no humour. Really good 
women never have. She explained full tilt and as earnestly 
as though she were Desdemona soothing Othello, that it was 
of me she was talking, that she was telling Colbert of a story 
I had written when I was still a boy — a beautiful story, she 
thought it, — and asking him if in spite of his wife’s bad opin- 
ion of this same novel — my first consecutive effort inspired 
by my mother in Tours — he would not read it and himself 
judge of it. Am I never to shake free of that rubbishy manu- 
script, that immature scribble ? Apparently no, for Colbert 
has agreed with Bernardette’s suggestion. He wants to read 
my romance and bring it out in place of the poems, if he 
finds the story all Bernardette thinks it is. Times have 
changed, it seems ; he said there is a revival at present of the 
idyllic, the archaicly simple. Bernardette repeated his words 
to me, she was twittering with what she considered her good 
news. 

I did not leave her long in doubt as to what I thought of 


202 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


her procedure, her interfering, meddling presumption. She 
wants to place my work for me, does she? Perhaps she will 
write my books for me next. Besides, “You can’t carry out 
your agreement, Bernardette,” I concluded, “I don’t know 
where the manuscript is, it is lost.” 

“No, it is not,” she assured, “I have it. I came across it 
when I was helping Yvonne put your mother’s house in or- 
der, just now, before we left Tours.” 

Trust her for that, the irrepressible busy-body! Well 
what do I care, what does it matter ? I wash my hands of the 
affair. Let her submit the manuscript to Colbert, let him 
pass his verdict on it. Why should I mind? I am strong 
enough, I hope, to hear his criticism. And if — just suppose 
by some fluke the book pleased him, — why then he might give 
me hack the poems — those poems I have grown to hate, those 
poems I must have. 

After all, why should I worry?' Why should I torment 
myself ? I am on the knees of the gods. Only I will put a 
stop to my wife’s — we will call it, active interest. I do not 
think she will forget what I said to her to-night. 

My position is certainly awkward. Bernardette’s money 
supports me for the present, furnishes, for instance, this neat 
brougham in which we go trolling home, but I will not have 
Madame Bernardette think that though she holds the purse- 
strings, I am a figure-head of a husband, and that she can 
dispose of me and my brain as she pleases. I told her so 
point blank. 

Poor little girl, I don’t want to he hard on her. I must 
remember all this is new to her. Five months ago and she 
had never been out of the radius of Saint Lucien, her parish 
church. To-night was a strain for her, I don’t doubt. The 
lights of the Champs Elysees showed her in the carriage be- 
side me, pale — paler as each street-lamp flashed over her, 
very young and tired seeming. 

“Well, we will say no more about it, Bernardette,” and 
I took her hand. It was quite cold. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


203 


After a pause, she asked, “Armand, did I look nice to- 
night ?” 

“Why: — yes, Bernardette.” 

“I don’t think my bodice was quite right — ladies show a 
great deal of their shoulders — don’t they, in Paris?” 

“Well, I was just going to say, for one thing, your dress 
was not decolletee enough. You need not he ashamed to show 
your neck, it is very pretty. I think Undine had just your 
throat. If I were a sculptor, I should make a statue of you 
and call it Undine. I have told you so often, Bernardette, 
have I not?” 

“Oh, yes,” she said and she blushed. Yes, she actually 
blushed. She blushes as only women blush in novels. She 
belongs to a type that I thought as extinct as the dodo. I 
feel she is going to be a mill-stone about my neck, with her 
prudery, her ideas of wifely duty, her antiquated notions. I 
know I shall never be able to make anything of her. 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


“A. silent and loving woman is a gift of the Lord.” 

Ecclesiasticus. 

Octobee 5, 1885. One emotion can replace love in a life 
— one only, it, too, is a panacea and a cross and a divine illu- 
sion. The enchantment of art, I mean, its holy call, the sa- 
cred elation of creative work. I remember when I first knew 
Marie-Therese, I felt a glow in my breast, a lightning and 
a wonder. Eirst love, I suppose, something of what I feel 
now, when I draw my chair to my desk, look into my soul 
and see what I have to say. When I was long absent from 
her, I remember, I ached with wanting to be with her again. 
It was a forlorn, desolate pain, as now when I run short of 
inspiration. 

Certainly the Princess Roumistorf was a psychologist. 
I am no Verlaine, no Bacchic genius, as she said. Health is 
my Muse. Unless I follow her rules, I prove the veriest 
dunce. Ho, worse, a neurotic fool. The divine blunderings 
of absinthe were never mine. 

My regime for work in the past was all wrong. Marie- 
Therese with her theory of alcoholic stimulants did me no 
good. I was fast going down hill when this conventional lit- 
tle wife of mine, this stern little huswife brought me up 
short. Where clocks are set to the minute and life keeps 
stroke with the clock, where the daintiest precision reigns, 
where pen and ink can be found where they should be, the 
rowdiest Bohemian must reform. I have been forced to toe 
the line these last weeks. Well, I do not mind, method suits 
me and my work. 

I rise early and make the most of the matutinal hours. I 
find these the best now though I once had a theory that I 

204 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


205 


could only write after midnight. There is something inspir- 
iting about the first freshness of the morning. In the ver- 
dant patch that serves us for a garden the birds are trying 
their voices. From over the brick wall through the Hue 
Saint Louis en Lille, I hear children filing to school. The 
influence of Chantecler, the droning and creaking of the 
market-carts seem still to hold the city in a spell. Something 
unsophisticated, sane and sweet, breathes through the streets, 
an atmosphere Paris loses as the day wears on. 

I draw my desk to my study window. I breakfast while 
my mind skirmishes in the world of imagination, explores 
and feels the way for to-day’s work. The cosy room is im- 
pregnated with the aroma of coffee, that inspiring potion, 
the drug of so many literary men — Balzac, Bourget and how 
many others? I will say for our cook, he makes the best 
coffee in Paris, Bernardette taught him and Bernardette has 
a genius for cooking, for getting the best out of servants, in- 
deed for all household affairs. 

Sometimes of a morning, she taps on my door, a soft little 
rap that would not scare away a thought, and when I let her 
in, I always find I need something. She seems to know by 
instinct when I am short of ink, when my pad is out, when 
my pencil is reduced to a stump. I am very sensitive to be- 
ing disturbed in the midst of my work, hut somehow I never 
mind Bernardette. I do not even object to having her with 
me in the room when I am writing. She comes and goes 
swift and light, noiseless as — no, not a shadow, for that sug- 
gests something cold and ghostly — as she flits through the 
house I hardly know to what to compare her. When I try 
to visualise her, symbols occur to me so hackneyed that I am 
ashamed to quote them. Only very simple words describe 
her, such adjectives as our old-fashioned poets, whom no one 
reads any more, use. I only know of one old, old phrase to 
tell how she passes through my room and hovers near me for 
an instant. “She seems,” says some quaint hook I remem- 
ber, “like an embodied blessing, a good wish, a formulated 


206 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


prayer.” Sometimes, if my work is going well, I stretch out 
and take one of her hands — she has very pretty hands, sweet 
as two white roses — and I kiss its palm. She does not speak 
for fear of disturbing the spell, the sacred spirit of thought 
that broods in my room. She puts a finger on her lips and 
in her wide, solicitous eyes, I see all her wonder at and 
belief in my unwritten book. She backs gently away and I 
never hear her shut the door after her. 

My unwritten book ! I told Bernardette the plot one day 
in Venice when we were on our honeymoon. She is god- 
mother to this new romance of mine. It should be a success 
for it is written with a racking joy such as I have never 
known before, written from the heart and sincerely, easily 
too, my pen obeys me, seems alive with intelligence. 

As a matter of fact, since a fortnight ago, I am master 
of my brain, ever since my business with Colbert re my first 
novel and those accursed poems was settled to my satisfac- 
tion. I shall never forget the moment when my wife handed 
me the publisher’s letter — bis verdict of my first novel, my 
idyll written in Tours and submitted to him by Bernardette. 
The note was addressed to her, she had read it and I looked 
in her face. She was at once radiant and pale, eager yet 
tremulous. I hardly knew if she brought good or bad news. 
Women’s emotions are so strangely commingled. Like the 
rainbow their smiles are no certain presage. When at last I 
understood that for once Colbert was not of his wife’s mind, 
but approved of my first novel and offered to publish it in 
place of the poems, in fact had already sent it to press, I was 
dumbfounded. Indeed, I cannot realise even now that I 
shall stand or fall by my own talent and not by another’s, 
that I shall not owe my name to the Roumistorf. Her poems, 
grudgingly resigned to me by Colbert, are mouldering in my 
desk now waiting to be consigned to the flames. I suppose it 
is no more honest to suppress these verses than to claim them. 
At any rate though, I need not accept money for another’s 
work. 


A WOMAN’S MAN- 


207 


As the thing panned out, Bernardette served me a good 
turn that night at dinner with my publisher. I am forced to 
admit it. I shall always he just to her, I hope. Indeed, I 
admire in this woman her innate sagacity as a mate. She 
seems to have a premonition of all that could work me ill. 
She hates those poems as though she knew their origin. 
Temptation, sorrow, illness, she has a flair for whatever 
threatens me. She keeps evil out of our house by instinct, 
just as the beaver builds its dam and the sparrow makes its 
nest. 

October 9 , 1885 . Yesterday was Bernardette’s birthday. 
I had forgotten it till a hamper bore down on us from her 
lavish parents. Then, though in the throes of a chapter, I 
offered to hurry out and buy my wife whatever she most 
wanted. She asked me to take her with me. “Of course, 
Bernardette, you, yourself, shall choose your present.” But 
no, she protested, I must do that. She wants to he with me 
for some sentimental reason, I concluded. She is used to 
being made much of on her birthday. Indeed, she suggested 
we might pass the day as a holiday, lunch in the Bois per- 
haps. 

What a little bourgeoise she is with her love of fetes and 
conjugal outings! Her idea of happiness is to see the sky 
between the tree boughs. She is imbued with provincial no- 
tions. I offered her my arm, laughing, I agreed to parade up 
and down the Bois in marital fashion and so let the world 
know we were married and a happy pair enough. I had 
brain-fag as a matter of fact and was thankful for an excuse 
to leave my work. Besides, Bernardette grows anxious if 
I let too many days pass without my constitutional, so I al- 
lowed her to inveigle me out into the air. 

| This is as lovely an autumn as ever I remember. Weather 
to turn the thoughts of a holy hermit to love, an Indian sum- 
mer, an after-glow sweet with the scents of a lost season. Yes- 
terday in the streets, Bernardette and I passed women op- 


208 


A WOMAN'S MAN 


pressed by furs, overtaken by the sun, moving languidly. 
Each was strangely, disturbingly lovely in her way. Heat,, 
especially unseasonable heat, brings out the beauty of a 
woman, just as it forces open the buds of flowers, — it expands 
the pupil, floods the eye with light for the long looks that 
ignite love. 

The Bois seemed like a second Eden. Poor Bemardette ! 
I wonder why she chose to follow just this vista, just this 
path. This wood, although she will never know it, is alive 
for me with the thought of another woman. It is here I 
first drove with Marie-Therese. Here I wandered back to 
dream of her. Here I waited and longed for a letter from 
her. Here I came to die for her. The stirring of the leaves, 
all the fluttering sounds, the palpitant scents of the forest 
evoked for me the self I used to be. 

My wife had taken my arm, we walked in silence. I 
glanced at her and saw in her face a celestial gravity. For 
once she forgot to exclaim over the sun, the trees, the birds, 
to give vent to the “Ohs!” the “Ahs!” “Look here, Ar- 
mand,” “Look there, Armand !” with which, like all Erench 
women, or at least all French women of the middle classes, 
she usually punctuates our country walks. I felt she had 
something to say to me, something to confide, some plea to 
make perhaps. She was brooding over a secret — a happy 
secret. “She has the same expression,” I thought, “as once 
when old Anselme drank our health — hers and mine. We 
were just engaged, I remember, and he wished us joy. So 
long as she does not ask to have her parents live with us — 
those two good bourgeois in Paris, one at each of my elbows. 
No, no, a thousand times no. I would divorce her rather.” 

The biblical majesty of the forest kept us silent. All 
about us the leaves gave voice to an incessant call, a sighing, 
a soughing, a primeval chant, the earth’s oldest utterance. I 
would glance now and then at the woman who walked by my 
side, and she, too, as though drawn by my glance, would turn 
to me while her brown eyes, where sweet virtue looks out, 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


209 


would open to mine wide as though to say, “See deep into me, 
read my joy, guess my secret.” 

I thought, “She is happy.” I was conscious of a vague 
annoyance. I can never catch her moods. Her emotions are 
not contagious — at least to me. Somehow, against her sen- 
timents, I seem inoculated. “What has she to say to me ?” I 
asked myself and I would not, by questioning her, help her to 
tell me. 

We turned into a by-path. “How still it is, the birds 
have gone South.” And just as she spoke the wood, which 
indeed till then had been silent as a cloister, woke to twitter- 
ing, to crystalline sounds and we came into a sunny clearing 
alive with children. 

In the ruddy light, a Punch and Judy booth was set, its 
canvas sides flapping in the breeze. The puppets gambolled, 
rapped each other, made love, died and began all over again. 
Happy comedians, eternally comic, eternally loved. Ambu- 
lant stalls were here, too, bright with variegated balls, with 
hoops, with succulent sucre d’orge, with tin music-boxes that 
ground out a tune bravely, while all the gaiety of a children’s 
fair clattered among the ancestral trees. 

A little boy ran out of the crowd and came towards us, 
for Bernardette charms children. Several steps from us, he 
stumbled and lay sprawling contemplating whether to cry or 
no, and as my wife lifted him and held his head against her 
breast for a moment, as she smiled at him and gave him back 
to his mother, I guessed her secret for I read this woman like 
a book. There is not much of the sphinx about her. I should 
love her better perhaps if there were. She is very simple and 
her face is the page of her heart. 

As we went homewards through the sacred aisles of the 
forest, Bernardette talked to me of our promised child. She 
told me she knew I wanted it to be a boy and she spoke of 
him as though he were already grown and were walking be- 
tween us through the woods. “He” and “him,” she said, and 
“our boy.” She was radiant as though she had communed 


2ie 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


with the divino Isis and I wondered at her. Her voice was 
sweet with her trust of the future, her trust of me and of 
our mutual happiness. 

Yet somehow I did not feel especially touched by what 
she told me, nor drawn to her. Ah, I can well understand 
that if I loved this woman, all would be different, a child of 
hers and mine would be to me the holiest pledge, the dearest 
bond. I should trace in its face, hers. I should listen for 
her voice in its inarticulate babble, but it takes more than 
the fact of paternity to make a father. 

Besides, I am not fit to educate, to direct a child. Not 
fit to give life, that questionable gift. Yes, questionable 
certainly, for if I were offered the choice of living over again 
or of slipping out of existence, I should choose the latter so 
long as it implied an entire unconsciousness. Yet here is 
Bemardette who has suffered in her time no doubt, who has 
known some twenty years of life, here she is singing as she 
sews, already tuning her voice to a lullaby, smiling and 
dreaming because a child is going to be born. 

Yesterday I watched her. She was straightening my 
desk and I thought, “Yes, you are the helpmate divinely de- 
voted. You are what a wife should be, the tender and in- 
spired friend, yet how little you mean to me really — you and 
your poor child.” 

December 28, 1885. Should I love Bernardette better if 
she were capricious, pitiless, false to the marrow, the dan- 
gerous agent of perverted moods, if she were just such an- 
other woman as I have known — yes, no doubt, for the human 
heart is essentially ungrateful, a bully. We love best those 
who make us suffer. 

January 80, 1886. My book is out. It is launched. 
Prettily bound but not as I saw it in my mind’s eye. I 
stared at my name on the cover. I confess it is a satisfac- 
tion to read “Armand de yaucourt” printed in gilt. The 


A WOMAN’S MAJST 


211 


volume is thicker than I had thought; deliciously, intoxi- 
catingly, it reeks of the press. If I had listened to Marie- 
Therese, this book would be rotting in a drawer. I handled 
it, I opened it at random and read a passage. Where I 
looked down at hazard, where my finger pointed, the word 
“success” was in the line. I took this for a good omen — my 
book will do well, at least, I hope so. A little of my heart 
goes out with it, wayfaring into the world. I shall never love 
my child as I love this offspring of my brain, this vitalized 
bit of my fancy. 

February 28 , 1886 . It is a privilege to live in Paris — 
the school for artists, for writers at least. The painter and 
the sculptor, I admit, are perhaps better off in Rome, but the 
man who transmutes his emotions into words will find his 
city, Paris. Here the brain is constantly spurred. Here one 
literary masterpiece is jostled by the next, only here you find 
conversation, not talk. Yesterday, Marie-Therese’s recep- 
tion day, I stepped in to pay her my respects, oh irony ! Ci- 
vility urged this visit, policy also. Her husband is publish- 
ing my book and she herself has removed her ban from it. 
She actually congratulated me — “Snake, snake,” I thought, 
“lovely snake.” 

Her compliments show whence the wind veers. The book 
is making a stir, I do believe, and our spirituelle Madame 
Colbert wishes to pass me off as her protege. I am the man 
of the hour, it seems, her guests were obsequious to me — all 
sugary manners and honeyed smiles! Yesterday for the 
first time, I enjoyed listening to these literary poseurs or 
rather I enjoyed talking them down, treating them to my 
opinions, dosing them with my ideas outrageously. 

The discussion was on love. To hear these psychologists, 
these critics dry as dust, these hair-splitters and book-worms 
decanting on the tender passion, amused me not a little, but 
I have noticed what people practise the least, they talk about 
the best. 


212 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


Some one propounded the question, Can love he overcome 
by him who suffers it ? Can this sentiment be destroyed be- 
fore it has gone through the grades of what Stendhal has 
called crystallisation, the gamut of admiration, desire, 
frenzy, satiety ? Can this passion be put an end to prema- 
turely and of purpose — in short, can love be cured ? 

“No,” says one. 

“Yes,” says another. 

“Assuredly,” says a third. 

“It can be dissipated by dissipation, by drink, by dulling 
the senses, by excess of all kinds. Love is only a need that 
tries to pass itself off as a romantic aspiration.” 

“Not at all,” some one intervenes. “Love is a malady of 
the mind, an idee fixe , a monomania. The lover must exert 
his will-power if he would be free, he must employ self-sug- 
gestion, the Charcot treatment. Love is merely the obsesr 
sion of sex.” 

“Let us reason,” propounds an old scientist in an alpaca 
skull-cap. “Love is from a purely phenomenal point of 
view, the concentration of all the forces of the soul on the 
loved object, or to be more precise, we will call the loved 
object A, and the diverse forces of the soul concentrated on 
A, b. c. d. e. Do you accept the following equation A =■ b+c 
-j-d-f-e ? Or to be more explicit, this is our problem, to detach 
the forces of the soul from the loved object on whom they are 
concentrated; in short, to detach b. c. d. e. from A: b. let 
us allow answers to sensuality of which love is compounded. 
To detach b. from A, I should suggest concentrating b. on 
another object, for, to quote Lucretius, “He who avoids love 
nevertheless does not lack the joys of Venus:” c. — I am ex- 
pounding the case of a man in love — is the pride of the male, 
the desire to dominate. To detach c. from A, I should sug- 
gest the undertaking of some business, either commercial 
or artistic, likely to have a triumphant conclusion capable 
of enhancing a man’s self-esteem: d. is the instinct of 
cruelty which is developed at the same time as the in- 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


213 


stinct of sex. To detach d. from A, I should suggest 
patronising boxing-matches, bull-rings, cock-fights : e. ia 
the need for anxiety, the appetite for emotion always char- 
acteristic of lovers. To detach e. from A, I should suggest 
a flutter at Monte Carlo. Thus I have detached b. c. d. e. 
from A and A equals zero.” 

Poor old gentleman, as abstruse and innocent as the phi- 
losopher in the fable who sheltered the naughty god. 

“Mon Dieu, Monsieur the algebraist,” some one protested, 
laughing, “I can recommend a much simpler method. 
Change of surroundings, a few months’ travel will work 
wonders. The absent are soon forgotten, displaced from the 
heart by new faces, strange horizons, other climates.” 

“No, no, on the contrary- — what is that English proverb 
— Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Imaginative lov- 
ers, and all lovers are imaginative, are strung by separation 
to fever-pitch. No, the only cure for love is to see the be- 
loved always, at all hours to grow satiated.” It was Ma- 
dame Colbert who spoke. “Monsieur de Vaucourt, what do 
you think ?” 

“I think, Madame, there is no cure for love.” 

“No cure, why?” 

“Because the lover at heart never wants to be cured. Oh, 
I admit he complains, he suffers very really, but he prefers 
the divine pain of unrequited love, of jealousy even, to the 
opiate of indifference.” 

There was a moment’s silence. I felt I had the best of 
the argument. 

“That was an interesting discussion,” I said to Bernar- 
dette as we left. I had brought her with me on my visit. 

“Oh yes,” she said, “all those people talk very well, they 
are very clever.” 

March 1J+, 1886. Notices, criticisms, reviews. My book 
has stirred a tempest and every morning I am snowed under 
with newspaper clippings. I am submerged by them. The 
good words, like a hearty hand-shake, give me pleasure. 


214 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


The gibes, the reproofs hurt me. Why, why cannot I be 
more stoical ? I have a very poor opinion of the world — why 
should its judgments pain me ? Why should I toady to popu- 
larity ? The artist who is conscious of his public is lost. If 
he cannot write from his heart as he feels and so satisfy him- 
self, he had best never put pen to paper. 

Dear God, I don’t ask — let me succeed, but let me be 
sincere. May I never be read, but may I always write as I 
believe. 

April 1886 . I am very ill — nerves, I think. Yester- 
day upset me — last night, rather. What a nightmare ! Cer- 
tainly,' certainly, women are not the finely-strung creatures 
we are. They have not the exquisite power for suffering we 
have, the tormented, excruciated imaginations. Yesterday 
when I came home from the Club, to find the doctor and the 
nurse already installed — oh, my God, only an artist could 
understand what I went through. 

I sat in the dining-room. I should have liked to crawl 
under the table. I kept my hands over my ears. My poor 
little Bemardette, my poor darling! I never knew I cared 
for her so fondly. I realised where I should be if she failed 
me and died and all for the sake of a wretched child, a 
stranger, a usurper. God, the agony of waiting ! I felt like 
a murderer, a butcher! I hope never again to go through 
anything like this. 

Bernardette several times sent word to me not to be 
frightened. But it is all very well to talk, to be optimistic. 

I clung to the doctor — I shook him to tell me the news. — 
“It is all over, you have a strapping son.” 

“She is dead?” — “No, doing well.” — I sank into the 
nearest chair smiling like a fool. 

Later that same day. I approached the vast, curtained 
bed where she lay. I drew near with a sort of fear, the mor- 
bid, cowardly dread I have of coming into contact with sick- 


A WOMAN’S MAN 215 

nes3 or any form of pain, but her gentle, white face, divinely 
familiar, reassured me. 

“Isn’t he lovely, Armand ?” and she showed me what she 
held in her arms. “I wish your mother could have seen 
him.” She smiled, she blushed with happiness and on her 
cheek a tear dried of itself as she whispered to me. 


CHAPTER XXXV 


“He that getteth a wife begetteth a possession, a help like unto 
himself and a pillar of rest.” 


Ecclesiasticus. 


March 10, 1886. A happy life, they say, has no his- 
tory, — reversed, does the proverb hold good ? Does a smooth 
life, an easy gliding by of the years, imply a happy life ? I 
confess I have my moments of impatience when I weary of 
sailing always to favourable winds, when I tire of the eternal 
sunshine in which I have basked for the last five years, 
when I sicken of my obstinate good fortune. Yes, every- 
thing I put my hand to prospers. My books sell and are 
not trash for all that 

It is five years since I opened this diary, five years since 
my eldest son was born. I have two children now, both 
boys. They are fine fellows, I am told, and do after their 
kind — laugh, cry and race through the corridors like ponies 
till my wife checks them with a sentence — one little phrase 
that sends them scurrying to the nursery. The magic words 
are: “Your father is working,” and a sacred hush settles 
through our house. 

Yes, I give Bernardette her due. She keeps the children 
in hand. She looks after my interest, she puts me and my 
work first as she should, she shares in my celebrity, and it 
is only just that she should help me in the throes of crea- 
tion. As I tell her, I don’t object to her light step, it does 
not annoy me, but when I am wrestling with and sweating 
over some literary problem, the patter of the children’s feet 
drives me mad. 

Bernardette knows that when I am disturbed in an in- 
spiration the furies I give vent to tire me. Scenes do not 
216 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


217 


agree with me, and she knows it — as I repeat to her my 
nerves are not of cast-iron — I should not he an artist if they 
were. To do her justice, she spares my susceptibilities, she 
does her best. It is* very rarely I have cause to find fault 
with her. 

I admit I might have married a woman of a more intel- 
lectual fibre, capable of sharing my spiritual life — how often 
we have discussed literature, psychology, art and its mys- 
teries, Marie-Therese and I ! Still I must not complain, 
Bernardette has her uses, her very mediocrity is helpful, 
she is the average woman, she represents the average public. 
As my book progresses I read it to her. She listens to me 
with her whole heart. I watch her face, she smiles, her eyes 
are humid and I think, “This is well done, this is good.” 
Her eyebrows contract, she looks down and to myself I say, 
“No, this is all wrong, draw a line through it.” If what I 
have written is over-subtle, morbid, tortured, she does not 
appreciate it, however fine the prose, hut if what I read her 
is true, human, from the heart, I see by her eyes, she under- 
stands me; she is of the simple of the earth, but I ask her 
advice and what is more, I take it. 

I have something to show for these five years — seven 
books, all in their eighth and ninth editions. I have kept 
my nose to the grindstone and yet managed to find life 
sweet, full of colour and aroma. I have hummed at my 
work, I have known seraphic days when all the noises of 
our fretful globe were blotted out by the dream-world. I 
talk with my characters, I shake them by the hand and in 
the last chapter we part friends. 

In August I rest, I come down out of the clouds. I take 
Bernardette and the children to Etretat, to Dinard, to 
Dieppe, to wherever I feel I can be content, vegetate best 
and keep an empty brain. I look forward to my holidays 
as I did when I was a boy. With the same excitement, ela- 
tion, with more perhaps for I was often sad in childhood, 
sadder in adolescence, a stormy petrel. And now what am 


218 


A WOMANS MAN 


I ? A poet who has learnt to plough with his Pegasus and 
turn up furrows of money. A conscientious, meticulous per- 
son into the bargain, the father of a family, a model husband, 
faithful in all hut thought — well, that is with the exception 
of some few sheer physical aberrations — a man astonished 
by his own hum-drum virtues. Yes, I am astonished by the 
succession of incidents that have kept me an almost perfect 
domestic character, for at heart I am not changed. I am as 
susceptible as ever to the beauty that elbows me in the world, 
and the artist is a born polygamist. 

A man in the heyday of celebrity, as I am now, serves as 
a target for women. Long looks are aimed at me, long looks 
that end in a down flutter of the eyelids. I meet twin souls 
and sister spirits willing to serve as my next heroine and 
these spirits have sometimes very earthly charms, and these 
elect souls have bodies as well. But the fact is, Bernardette 
and I together, have put up a fight for fame and fortune, 
our mutual struggle has knitted us close and kept me faith- 
ful, if not literally, at least faithful at heart, to my wife, 
to a woman I do not love or at least to a woman I am not in 
love with. 

March 20, 1891 . Jacques Colbert is dead, died at his 
office, at his desk of the rupture of an artery. The Figcuro 
this morning has the news. A column of eulogy and a full- 
length portrait of poor Jacques. The firm is not dissolved, 
but in the hands of the silent partner, a sterling fellow, I am 
told, and a good business man. I read this item with relief, 
for I could not forbear a qualm as to my royalties and the 
fate of my future books. Than Colbert’s no house could 
serve me better ; I shall never find such another publishing 
home. 

All morning I have not been able to settle down, I am 
incapable of a stroke of work. I cannot bring myself to 
believe that never again shall I see my publisher’s signature, 
that post after post will come in and never a line from him. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


219 


It is the incongruity of the thing that shocks. No one 
was ever less fit for the aureole than poor old Jacques with 
his London clothes, his pat little compliments and pomaded 
hair. 

He was a big man, though, to judge from this morning’s 
Figaro , he has got through more work than I ever guessed — 
but this is a world of prodigies nowadays and one has to he 
an intellectual giant to make any sort of a name. 

I must write Marie-Therese a letter of condolence, a dif- 
ficult feat, for although I have rarely heard her laugh, she* 
has a diabolical sense of humour. 

March 22, 1891. I met Kerlavoz to-day, a man I had 
not seen in six years. We came face to face outside Max- 
ime’s, he was going down and I coming up town. We shook 
hands like two friends. I felt drawn to him because of the 
melodrama we once enacted together. We stood for a mo- 
ment talking of ourselves. Kerlavoz sketched for me his 
Odyssey, he is in Paris on a furlough, in the autumn the 
Martinique in his garrison. I forgot to ask him if he were 
married. We talked of desultory things, of last year’s Long- 
champs, of the Grand Prix, of Colbert’s death, of Marie- 
Therese. We spoke of her without bitterness as without 
enthusiasm, as one discusses a woman of an older genera- 
tion. 

I described Colbert’s funeral, I had seen her in the aisle 
backed by his relatives receiving condolences and sympathetic 
hand-shakes. I told how strange she looked in black, how 
incongruous, how almost sacrilegious her crepe veil seemed 
streaming over her ruddy hair, but these aesthetic details were 
lost on Kerlavoz. He accompanied me for a while on my 
way and we talked of other things. 

Jivne 12, 1891. Ferreting through a disused desk long 
locked, I noticed among the memoranda the scribbled notes 
and scenarios of books still unwritten, a sheaf of pages black 


220 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


with my writing, some twenty leaves clamped together. I 
opened the manuscript and recoiled. 

Every man has his closeted skeleton, they say, his secret 
horror and hidden sin. I had forgot mine almost. These 
last years I have taken myself at the world’s valuation. I 
have heard on: every hand that I am a man devoted to the 
good of literature, a discoverer of talent, a generous ad- 
mirer of the masterpieces of others, an artist with a con- 
science and I have grown to believe it. Yes, until to-day 
when I lifted the lid of this desk and saw again the Roumi- 
storf’s poems, then I realised I am a thief. Yes, I, the gen- 
tle-mannered, cultured man of letters, I am a thief. I have 
kept the divine thoughts, the sweet songs of another, from 
the world under lock and key. 

The Roumistorf’s poems lay before me. At my touch 
the pages shivered like the wings of a bird, fluttering as 
though to say, “Let me free to fill the air with music.” 

“But no,” I thought, “I cannot. I should have to con- 
fess to Marie^Therese.” 

And as I threw the manuscript back into the musty desk, 
as I drew down the lid, I felt I was smothering a live thing, 
something quivering, rebelling, swelling with song, and that 
ultimately must find a voiee. 

'August 29, 1891. This morning brought me a letter 
from Ernest. As my books appear, he never fails to write 
me his bad opinion of my work. 

Like most scientists, Ernest scorns the products of the 
imagination, the efforts of fancy. “If you knew something 
of my profession,” he has often said, “you would not have 
to invent such rubbish or concoct what you call a plot. Only 
slices from life are true, gripping, worth while, but as for 
your realism, it makes me smile,” thus the genial Ernest, an 
arriviste if ever there was one, a mighty man in Tours now. 
Erance has faith in him, viz., the touch of red in his but- 
ton-hole, the Legion of Honour. His nose is promoted from 


A WOMAN’S MAN 221 

spectacles to a gold pince-nez, gloves of reverent black dis- 
guise his hands, his is the smile of a Lutheran pastor. 

My wife cannot abide him, I suspect it is the red in his 
button-hole that has maddened her, she is jealous for me. 
This touch of human weakness is not unpleasing in her. 

We have been to Tours, Bernardette and I, three times 
^ince our marriage — once immediately after our honey- 
moon, once on a New Year’s visit to the Anselmes’ and once 
to find a caretaker for my mother’s house — Yvonne growing 
old. She is dead now, homely, devoted servant. Monsieur 
Godot, too, has died, Monsieur le Cure has gone to another 
parish. Saint Lucien’s church is rebuilt, the very clerks in 
the post-office are changed, the names of some of the streets 
are altered, and in my native town my heart has no root. 

It is not so with Bernardette. I cannot make a Parisian 
of her. Her thoughts are always turning to Tours, she reads 
L’Echo de Tours every morning. What this sheet says of 
my books affects her far more than the praise or the fame 
of the capital. I suspect she is homesick at times for the 
provinces, for the somnolent and sunny town where the 
grass sprouts between the paving-stones. I think in spirit 
she often sits in the cloistered house of her childhood, or 
walks in her parents’ garden, for sometimes she says, “Ar- 

mand, do you remember ” usually some incident of our 

courtship, some trivial occurrence. And I am surprised 
that so young a woman should live so much in the past. 

At times I wonder, “Is she happy?” In Paris she is 
transplanted, she was not made for this city of Gomorrah, 
for the witty warfare of Bohemia, for all the misery and 
intrigue of an artistic career. “A goodly life and a quiet 
fallen in pleasant lines” — a life after the psalmist’s taste 
would have contented her and that is just what I cannot give 
her. 

In his letter to-day, Ernest tells me he has bought the 
house opposite my mother’s. He is installed already in his 
new home with his wife and his daughter. His daughter, 


222 


A WOMAJSPS MAN 


I imagine, is a nuisance to him. She is a witch of a girl, 
I have heard, ugly as sin and wilful as Eve, not at all what 
her father would like her to be, not at all the mirror of his 
virtues. 

I have to laugh when I think of Ernest and his wife 
posing as models of respectability and this tell-tale child 
cropping up between them. I am told she knows by in- 
stinct all the studio slang and herds with the rowdiest raga- 
muffins in Tours, she is a give-away indeed, the blood of Bo- 
hemia clamours in her. Her parents may purse their lips 
and be as bland, as bland, but they cannot do away with the 
disreputable gay, perverse past, symbolised in their child. 
It all crops out in her, the mother’s low origin, the father’s 
native ^rascality. 

I am interested — why, I don’t know — in all I hear of 
this young baggage, skipping indecorously through life as 
though born to the sound of a barrel-organ. 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


‘Delilah therefore took new ropes and bound him* therewith.” 

J udges. 

September 15, 1891. Though Paris is frost-bound, be- 
sieged by winter, the Bois will not surrender to the cold but 
keeps green. In spite of a blast that tussles with the trees, 
wrenches at the flower borders and dies shivering on the lako^ 
exiled summer is hidden here. She gives herself away by 
dandelions forgotten and left to star the grass. I cut at 
these little yellow flowers this morning with my riding-crop, 
and each time I bent over the saddle, the smell of the earth 
turned up by the horses’ hoofs, the heady reek of the soil, 
intoxicated me, made me dream of ploughed fields and of 
harvests creaking home behind the oxen, of nut-brown maids, 
rustic lovers, things simple and archaic; the fumes of over- 
work cleared from my brain. 

I am glad I took Bernardette’s advice and treated my- 
self to a holiday. To do her justice, my wife has unerring 
instincts where my health is concerned. Her tenderness is 
alive with antennae quivering towards my future. She ha9 
a premonition of whatever threatens me and wards off eviL 
I should be grateful to her, I suppose, at least she under- 
stands my material needs, my tastes, my idiosyncrasies if 
you will, for I am not above a fad or so. My digestion is 
sacred to her, my appetite she has chronicled. I have only 
to say once, “I don’t eat this or that,” never to have it served 
again at our table. Hoise — sound jars on me — is barred 
from our house. Our children are more silent than most. 
The people who try my nerves — Bernardette’s friends most- 
ly — usually her friends are antipathetic to me — have 

223 


224 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


dropped off one by one. Our home life runs like clock-work 
to tbe bizarre hours I have set. My study is respected like 
the Holy of Holies. My desk venerated like tbe ark of God, 
and all this is thanks to Bernardette. 

Oh, I am not blind to her merits — she has a heart of 
gold, she is a genius in the kitchen, nor away from the stove 
is she lacking in an objective intelligence, in a certain pene- 
tration even. I admit she knows one side of me, the cor- 
poreal man, the poor perishable brute who must be fed and 
satisfied, humoured and flattered before the poet, the soul, 
the divine Israfel can find voice. This is, I think, an un- 
prejudiced summary, a verdict of what I have found her 
worth as a wife. 

Frankly, if I had to do it over again, if I were free to 
marry or no, I should hesitate before I chose for my wife 
Bernardette, and yet I cannot reproach her. I have no ex- 
cuse; the only plaint I can formulate is at most a poet’s 
whimper. Bernardette is not my soul’s affinity — that is all 
I find to say. Hers is not the veiled face of my dreams. She 
does not resemble the woman I could have loved. 

The fact is I should never have married. Cohabitation 
seems to me an unnatural intimacy. I cannot accustom my- 
self to coming across this woman in my house, nor do I grow 
used to her children growing up under my roof. 

It is terrible to be yoked for life, to look across the din- 
ner-table and think — yes, you are still pretty, the ritual of 
your movements charmed me once, but I have seen you so 
constantly sitting there opposite me — what will it be when 
you are grey and stout and old ! 

Poor Bernardette, if she should read this with those 
great, dark eyes that have never outgrown the gravity of 
childhood — those supernatural eyes of hers, limpid as her 
children’s, as innocent and wide. Pretty, tender being who 
threw in her lot with mine ! I have not made her life Para- 
dise, I imagine. It cannot be all bliss to be bound to a semi- 
great man such as I am, to an incomplete genius struggling, 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


225 


tortured, discontented, impotent to realise the colossal in- 
spirations that dominate him. 

Another woman would have completed me better, helped 
me to find myself. A wife I could have loved would have 
made me. I should have worked for her, dedicated my talent 
to her, -communed with her through my books. How else 
did Plutarch speak with Laura, he thought, “She will read 
this,” and found his genius. Dante might never have writ- 
ten had not Beatrice passed by, nor Raphael put brush to 
canvas had he not loved the Fornarina, the Madonna of his 
every masterpiece. Happy, happy artist who found his 
partner, whose talent was completed, perfected by the woman 
he loved. 

So went my reverie this morning, my day-dream. In 
my hand the bridle hung loose, my horse stepped delicately, 
choosing his footing, till at a turn of the road he shies, I 
start. From round the bend something is hearing down on 
us, the thud of flying hoofs, the spatter of tan and a shape 
hurtles by, half brute, half human, a woman sitting her 
horse as though she were part of the animal, swaying and 
straining with the steaming beast. She passes with her 
hand raised in a mock, military salute — her white glove is 
not paler than her face, the shadow of her hat-brim bars 
her brow, blindfolds her. But as she flashes by, I recognise 
the prominent, bismuth-tinted jaw of Marie-Therese. 

Ugly woman let loose without a groom, riding as though 
the furies were after her — what evil is in ferment. She 
looked livid, ravaged — I remember she has been ill or so 
some one told me, unless I read it in the paper. I think I 
heard she nearly died. I have been shockingly remiss — I 
left no card, sent no flowers, a lack of policy I must repair 
or Madame Colbert will develop a feminine grudge and turn 
my hooks down without a reading. 

A visit paid in the subdued and sympathetic key, a social 
call would not be amiss and the sooner I get the ordeal 


226 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


over, the better. I will go to Marie-Therese this week — say 
to-morrow — no, now, to-day. 

September 16, 1891 . She is changed — how exactly? 
The man who makes of love a diversion, not an art, would 
say she has altered for the worse, she has lost all semblance 
of youth. 

She rose to greet me, her back to the window. She is 
vigilant of light; the Circe, the charmer, dies hard in her. 
She did not offer her hand, but stood before me for a mo- 
ment as though to let me judge of her figure. Her body is 
the same, it has the same disproportions that fascinated me, 
the same wide, rather flat bosom and narrow thighs, the 
same vital, hungry movements as of old. Because of her 
significant silhouette, men, I imagine, follow her in the 
streets still. They hurry after her, they pass by, look back 
and start when they see her face, for between her collar and 
her brazen hair, her years, her paint, the ferocity of an old 
courtesan stares ahead down the street. The normal, aver- 
age male says, “She is old,” and goes his way, but the man 
alive to a subtler appeal than that of youth, looks twice at 
her, turns back and speaks to her perhaps. 

She offered me my favourite chair, the one I always 
chose — did she remember that, I wonder ? Beminiscent, I 
settled into my seat, instinctively my hand closed over the 
gilded arm, and the feel of the sculptured wood recalled to 
me ecstatic visits, long hours of a poignant contemplation. 
In particular I remember one evening. Marie-Therese had 
promised me that her husband would leave instantly after 
dinner. He pottered over his coffee nevertheless, while I, 
thinking, “Will he go, he will never go,” discussed Monsieur 
Thiers’ policy and clutched the arms of my chair. Covertly 
I would glance towards my mistress, signal her my despair 
and she, tantalising, perverse, would question her husband, 
laugh at his jokes. She was opposite to me, just as to-day, 
in the same bergere , and I remember as she breathed, her 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


227 


naked shoulder rubbed against the upholstery, against the 
tapestried rose where this afternoon streamed her widow’s 
weeds. 

Frankly, mourning does not become her. Black shows 
up her flamboyant, disordered hair, the powder sprinkled 
on her shoulders — she was always slovenly — while the moral 
correctness of her cuffs, the sumptuous sorrow of her weep- 
ers, suggest the get-up of a villainess of melodrama, a re- 
formed villainess, mind you, resigned to crepe after the scar- 
let spangles of the first three acts. 

I am not a man to he dominated by a woman because 
of her brain, to he subject to her because she has a brilliant 
mind, has thought and suffered much, lived hard and learnt 
how to express the view-point of femininity. Marie-Therese 
is too old to ever again come into my life. Nevertheless this 
afternoon talking with her, I realised there is nothing so 
stimulating to an author as to exchange ideas with a woman, 
provided she is frank enough to be herself, abnormal enough 
to confide the secrets, the masonic mysteries of her sex. 

She told me of her illness. “It seems,” she said, “a 
part of the time I was dying. I knew it and did some think- 
ing. I decided I had been a fool, that I might have got 
more pleasure out of life. I promised myself, if I pulled 
through, to cater to my appetites, my vices, and give myself 
an even better time. Death showed me nothing counts, 
nothing is real, but what physical satisfaction I have known 
and the bodily pain too, of course.” 

I sat with her until the dusk had flooded the room, till 
in the gloom she had regained some semblance of her former 
self. I did not leave until the servant had lit the lamp, 
until the light dispelled my illusion. 

In parting, Marie-Therese shook hands with me in a 
characteristic fashion. I remember this mannerism of hers. 
She gave me her right hand and then laid her left over our 
clasped hands. Her touch seemed changed. I glanced at 
her fingers, they are deformed by all the rings she used to 


228 


A WOMAN’S MAN 

wear, worn thin between the joints and the knuckles en- 
larged. Stripped nakedly white, her hands pressed mine. 
She has only kept her wedding ring, rubbed to a golden 
thread. 

I went away keyed to strange thoughts. I roamed the 
streets before turning to what I call home — home, that is 
a place no poet knows on this earth. I found a fire in my 
study, my supper waiting, my desk laid with pen, with 
paper, and on the hearth my bedroom slippers agreeably 
roasting. Those slippers, what a bourgeois touch! Poor 
Bernardette, as though comfort were synonymous with in- 
spiration. 

I did some sardonic thinking as I threw off my hoots. 
The house is sacredly still, the children are sleeping, I sup- 
pose, and Bernardette has crept to the dark upper storey 
to he near them, to brood over her hoys as though she 
feared to find them changelings. She has left the entresol 
to me and to my Muse, she is in deadly awe of my laurel- 
crowned mistress. 

My wife’s mute withdrawal from me seems to say, “Work 
— work.” My God, as though a sharp pencil, a clean pad 
and a well-trimmed lamp sufficed a poet such as I ! I am not 
a literary machine, I cannot go on indefinitely grinding out 
a thousand words a day. If I am to write again, I want the 
stimulus of adventure, of romance, of poignant sentiment, 
the lilt and throb the wakened senses give the mind. I need 
the sacerdotal flame of life, passion, a new mistress — for the 
man who works as I do now, heart-free, his work is still- 
born, abortive. 

Prom my desk I can see the garden soaked in moonlight. 
Nocturnal Paris, insidious pleasure blows in through my 
window. Yesterday there was frost in the air, to-day it 
is almost like summer again. On the sill a plant shivers 
deliciously and its ruffled leaves emit a whispering, sibilant 
sound like the frou-frou of a woman’s skirt. I must draw 
the curtain; I must shut out the palpitant, close night; I 


A WOMAN’S MAN- 


229 


must get on with my thirtieth chapter, I am scheduled to 
finish it to-night — an effort, a mental tug and I shall catch 
the thread. The blood rings in my temples. She said 
something this afternoon that I cannot forget — pshaw, I 
must concentrate. Yes, it impressed me strangely, dispro- 
portionately, filled me with a vague discomfort, a forebod- 
ing. With one of her probing looks, Marie-Therese asked, 
“What have you done with those early poems of yours — 
those you replaced by your first novel ? Why have you never 
published them?” 

I gave her some reason — I forget what, invented some 
excuse. They are here in my desk, these poems, still hid- 
den here. 

Strange she should remember these verses after all these 
years. What a tribute to the Roumistorf’s talent ! Strange, 
and yet no — why? I have always known immortality was 
in those poems. Once heard they must echo in the memory 
for ever. 

Yes, under her red eyebrows penciled black, Marie- 
Therese had looked at me intently — and quizzical, “Why 
not publish your poems the day you write yourself out ?'” she 
had propounded brutally, “they can serve for your swan 
song, you will never find a sweeter.” 


CHAPTER XXXVII 


“And I find more bitter than Death the woman whose heart is snares 
and nets and her hands are bands.” 


Ecclesiasticits. 


September 31, 1891. Bernardette has just told me that 
our son, our eldest, Lucien, is out of danger. He has been 
ill, very ill, it seems, though no one let me suspect his seri- 
ous condition. He has had a narrow escape. I never guessed 
how things were with him. How could I ? Whenever I 
saw his mother, she was calm, divinely hopeful and if white- 
faced, why her indefatigable nursing, her sleepless nights 
were enough to account for her pallor. How could I know, 
finding her able to smile, vigilant, practical, that she had 
seen the shadow of death hovering over her hoy, that the 
terrible angel had unfurled its wings and looked her in the 
face? 

Woman is extraordinary, incomprehensible. I am not 
the first to say it, her mind is a labyrinth, her heart is a 
maze. Here is my wife who has not shed a tear while her 
son was supposedly dying, who has kept a dry eye bright 
as steel to watch over him. She comes to me to tell me he is 
safe, that he is ours still and at first she cannot speak. 
Since our marriage, I have never before seen Bernardette 
cry, never indeed, since she was a little girl and her blurred 
features reminded me of an expression of her childhood, a 
pitiful expression. 

I followed her to the nursery to have a look at the boy. 
Shading the candle with her hand, she bent over Lucien’s 
bed and showed me his face. He was asleep, lying on his 
back, very straight as if at attention and he seemed taller 

230 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


231 


than I remembered him, as though he had sprouted during 
his illness, grown almost too long for his cot. 

Lucien is outgrow T ing his childhood; the toys seem to 
know it, they have skulked away into a far corner and there 
they huddle under the shadow of the piebald rocking-horse; 
the gay nursery riff-raff is cleared from about his bed and 
a space left free for the medicine table and for his mother’s 
chair. 

How like her he is as he lies there asleep, how like 
Bernardette when her eyes are shut and her disproportion- 
ately long lashes veil the blue shadows under her eyes. 

Poor hoy, he looks too weak and gentle, delicate and 
woman-bred, to ever make much of a man. It is time 
I thought about putting him and his brother through their 
paces, or I shall have two mollycoddles to cope with. It is 
time I had some say in the bringing up of my children, 
it is time Bernardette handed me over the leading-strings. 

“You did wrong,” I said to her, “not to tell me exactly 
how it was with Lucien, you should have let me know he was 
in danger ; you owed it to me, hut you are all the same, you 
women, where illness is concerned. You seem to think you 
can bully death and keep it out of the house by not nam- 
ing it.” 

She made me a sign not to speak so loud for fear of 
waking the child, and in the conflicting candle-light, she 
studied me for a moment with a deep, strange, enveloping 
look that I could not analyse. 


February 1, 1892 . “I have the scheme of your next 
novel,” Marie-Therese was pleased to he discursive to-day. 
The drug habit is mastering her more and more, I suspect, for 
at times her manner is needlessly challenging, over-em- 
phatic, her voice raucous. 

“Tell me your scheme, Madame,” I said, as I kissed her 
hand in greeting, her taut, aggressive hand stiffened for 
argument, nerved for a whirlwind eloquence of gesture. 


232 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


It was a version of her own, she confided, leaning towards 
me in the dusk, her eyesockets two black holes in her long, 
white face. Never once did she pronounce the word “I,” 
but referred to herself as “a friend of mine.” 

Hers was the story of a woman who had always been a 
beggar after pleasure, and who all at once found herself 
growing old without friends, without children, tortured by 
unassuaged appetites, by ineradicable desires, the pitiful 
story of a woman for whom Paris grew to be a city of re- 
proach because of the cult for beauty that goes on here, be- 
cause of the stones the jewellers show for a white throat, 
because of the coiffeurs’ windows, where the effigies, insipid, 
simpering and perennially young, seem to call, “Shame on 
you, where is your youth ?” 

I was glad to find her alone to-day without her usual 
court of decadent boys, all would-be authors, soured by ambi- 
tion and prematurely crabbed. I hate this generation of 
carpers, gossippy as old maids. To listen to them you would 
believe every writer who is not suffering from senile decay 
has softening of the brain, or is working merely for money. 
Do they chant the same dirge over me, I wonder % Yes, no 
doubt, for whenever one of the great men they describe a3 
“finished,” “written out,” a “pot-boiler” steps in to see 
Marie-Therese, the young sycophants rise to their feet with 
spines bent double and cringing with ceremony, gaping with 
respect, they greet the “burnt-out genius,” the “he is no 
good any more” with the same bow they keep for me. 

To-day I finished a book that has given me, lately at 
least, considerable trouble. The last pages drag and do not 
seem quite up to the mark. I want to start my next, but can 
think of no new plot, no original characters, no lovable 
heroine. My earlier heroines Marie-Therese thinks my best. 
For the first time in years, my pen has run dry. I have come 
to an impasse . 

Marie-Therese perhaps is right. I work too much against 
the grain and I may develop into a joyless literary hack. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


233 


June 22, 1892 . A disquieting thing has happened. For 
three months I have done no work. Some mysterious power 
has gone out of me. Whatever it was that drove me to self- 
expression, whatever force it may he that filled my head with 
teeming fancies, with creative pulsing, has deserted me. In 
my skull, the divine fire is burnt out, I am done for men- 
tally. Artistically I am finished, I have written myself 
out. 

Oh, at first, I would not give in to the conviction, I 
fought against it. For three months I racked my brain — 
my poor brain that was once so obedient, always tuned and 
ready to enchant me like some magical instrument playing 
of itself. I have waited with my forehead in my hands 
straining to imagine, to visualize, listening for the voice, the 
divine prompter — and nothing, an empty mind still, mute, 
not the quiver of an idea, only the lilt of unfinished phrases, 
the senseless repetition of some word echoing between my 
temples. 

At first I would not give way to panic, I reassured my- 
self, I said, “This is temporary, physical probably — perhaps 
the liver, or the almighty stomach is at fault, it is a case of 
anaemia, overwork, — a little patience.” 

Later I said, “I need some stimulant, more coffee, a sip 
of absinthe, more absinthe” — all useless. My God, the tor- 
ture, the hellish torment ! These impotent spells are the ar- 
tist’s inferno. 

As I said to Marie-Therese — I see her every day now, 
she is the only being who understands me, whom I can com- 
mune with in this bitter crisis — as I said to Marie-Therese, 
“It is all so fragile, so mysterious, the human mind, talent 
is an abnormality, a derangement of some molecule of grey 
matter — snap, the molecule slips back into place and the 
artist is normal again and uninspired. How many authors 
have come to the end of their tether suddenly, unaccount- 
ably, in full prime.” 

Marie-Therese agreed. She quoted Jose Maria de 


234 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


Heredia, who wrote but one novel, and Felix Anvers, who 
wrote but one sonnet, and other men whose brains or whose 
creative fancies, rather, closed up like the tomb never to 
open again. 

She pities me, I am sure. She thinks I am done for, I 
know. I can see it in her eyes. 

June 17 , 1892 . Could an actress, one of those exotic 
beings the footlights breed, ever attract me passionately? 
Last night at a soiree, here is the question I put myself. The 
guests were drawn up in a circle about Jeanne Ravonna of 
the Opera Comique, who had risen to sing. Strangled in 
sequins, laced to the shape of a base viol, she stood pumping 
her bosom up and down filling herself with air. I decided 
she was an unseemly spectacle. Indeed, in a woman, an 
exhibition of effort is always offensive and makes me 
ashamed. 

Waiting for her to sing, I avoided looking at her, but 
instantly her mouth opened, I turned to her racked and en- 
chanted by her voice. Her first cry was aerial, penetrating, 
the cry of culminating ecstasy, a sound that hovered for a 
moment as though suspended quivering, then broke up in a 
shower of tintillating sounds, quick, soft, palpitantly sweet 
as a flutter of kisses. Next, the melody took up its lilt, and 
suavely fell into the expected rhythm ; my heart was rocked, 
it sank and rose in time with the harmony. I longed to ab- 
sorb this voice, to breathe it into me. I wanted to drink it, 
it seemed to rise from the very source of this woman’s being, 
and suddenly, abruptly, it ceased on a short, sharp, un- 
assuaged cry that needed an answer. 

There was a momentary silence, then a sighing frou- 
frou of skirts and scarves and fans, and a little restrained 
social applause. 

My first thought was to hear Ravonna speak to me, to 
get near her. I offered her my arm, I took her into supper. 
Her face was still abstracted with the burden of her song, 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


235 


but soon her eyes lit up at sight of a langouste among its 
variegated jellies. I poured her out some champagne, hut 
she preferred port, and she quoted a list of wines and food 
forbidden her because of her top notes. Her stomach was 
then responsible for her voice, that voice I had adored as a 
soul’s quality, as a God-given, passionate gift! I left her 
soon after that. 

The salon seemed like a fairy aviary, quivering with 
wings, the pulsing of the women’s fans; each had its sig- 
nificant movement. One described a circle before it flitted 
against the breast and tapering chin, another kept up a 
throbbing rhythm as though shaken by the pulse, and per- 
sistently the flounces rustled, the ruffles fluttered, the eyes 
shifted and gleamed, and out of the bodices the shoulders 
shivered, dazzling samples of flesh. Billowy breathing, 
voices like flutes, all these women were grouped to advantage. 
Here a sunburst of fair hair showed near the dusky secret of 
a darker head, while the copper of henna, the brass of per- 
oxide, glowed with the decadent charm of artifice. The lamp- 
light suffused the folds of the skirts, the trains coiled about 
the ankles; the room was warm — close even, imbued with 
contradictory scents, oppressive musk, acute patchouli, the 
secret perfumes of laces, of scarves, the intimate fragrance 
of woman. 

I chose a seat near a woman with whom I have hardly 
ever spoken but of whom I think sometimes and about 
whom I once had a singular dream. Her first words belied 
the expression of her strange, disquieting eyes. 

I wonder why it is society women will always talk shop 
with us authors, and try to prove how versed they are in 
literature — as if we cared, as if the cultivation, the men- 
tality of a woman ever prompted a man to seek her company 
after dinner. 

The opinions of women are only interesting on questions 
of sex, and on such matters, women are often secretive and 


236 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


never sincere. Only with. Marie-Therese have I now and 
then heard a whisper of the feminine shibboleth. 

My wife, of course I understand, and yet at times even 
she has puzzled me, by an intonation, an indefinable expres- 
sion, by a sudden silence she mystifies me often — of late 
especially, till sometimes I have grown to feel Bernardette 
has had a change of soul, that a new being born in mystery, 
fired with reserve, with spiritual power now breathes in the 
body of the young girl I once knew. 

To-night, as never before, I was conscious of Bernar- 
dette’s altered identity. After the soiree, I was helping her 
on with her cloak, when over her shoulder she turned her 
face towards me. “Thank you,” she said with pretty cere- 
mony, with the smile most women keep for strangers only. 
And all at once I realised my wife verges close on beauty, 

yes, for all her provincialism, her old-world simplicity, she 
has a certain charm, a lingering sweetness of manner, in the 
eyes a look of inexhaustible tenderness, a lovable mouth, in- 
effably good. Indeed, if she were some one else’s wife, I 
think I might love her. 

October 3 , 1892. Three more months spent worrying 
at my brain that like a worn-out tinder-box will not ignite. 
The time hangs heavy on me. Exiled from the kingdom of 
the imaginative into this prosaic world, I find life a tedious 
complaint. 

Can it be that at thirty I am shelved, put away, like a* 
worn-out thing. Yes, evidently I am not meant to serve any 
more. I am finished, unless something of us survives in the 
next generation, unless one of my sons completes me, for at 
times I catch myself hoping that Lucien or Jacques may 
have inherited the talent I once had, my view-point, my trick 
of mind, only perfected, winged for immortality. And yet 
frankly, on second thoughts, why should I care whether my 
boys carry on my work, consolidate my name or not. As 

yet, though perhaps it is too early to judge of their promise. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 237 

I cannot see that these two children are anything very espe- 
cial, my wife, however, does not agree with me. 

November 10, 1892 . Who should call to-day hut Ernest 
and his wife. Always inching towards celebrity, worming 
himself into fame and fortune, my one time friend has come 
to town for the annual scientific banquet and suave, sancti- 
monious, unctuous, his ten fingers joined at the tips, his 
reassuring double chin overlapping his collar, he treats me 
to the conscious music of his voice, a voice lately acquired, 
attuned to the neurasthenic ear and not unpleasing to Er- 
nest’s own ear-drum, I should imagine, judging from the 
way he holds his head inclined on his shoulder to listen to 
himself. 

Meantime on the sofa, his wife and mine sit side by 
side bristling with politeness. All is not well between the 
ladies, or so I guess from their frequent and stereotyped 
smiles and from their talk which takes the form of out- 
rageous conjugal boasting. 

His Wife: “Ah, dear Madame, may you never know 
the slavery of professional life. A doctor’s time is not hi3 
own. At nine o’clock, my husband’s barouche draws up be- 
fore the door, the footman knocks, etc., etc.” 

My Wife: “Since my husband’s works have gone into 
a twentieth edition. . . 

His Wife: “Since Ernest has been made a member of 
the Institute. . . 

My Wife: “Indeed, ever since Armand was elected 
President of the Authors’ Society. . . .” 

Imagine all this punctuated by smiles, by bows, by twiir 
ters of congratulation, by a ceremonious rustling. 

His Wife: “I think I told you that Ernest had received 
a very rare medical order. ...” 

My Wife: “Did I mention that Armand is to he trans- 
lated into English and Italian. . . .” 


238 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


His Wife: “How often Ernest has been asked to write 
his biography. . . 

My Wife: “Armand always refuses to he interviewed, 
but let me tell you in confidence he is about to be elected to 
the Academy. . . 

Keally, Bernardette is overdoing things, just a little. 

The truth is these women are unscrupulous rivals. They 
married friends, men who were equals once. Which has 
made of her husband the superman — that is the question. 

I know in her heart, Bernardette is regretting that the 
chandelier is bagged in holland. To herself she is saying — 
“Why to-day of all days ?” while all the time she listens with 
an exquisite diffidence to her fat and common guest whose 
aggressive finery would be overpowering did not a Herculean 
umbrella somehow neutralise the dressy effect. 

“The Government will consolidate itself, believe me,” 
says the platitudinous Ernest, who is now all for law and 
order as a ladies’ doctor should be. Success often destroys 
the originality of a man, his worth as a thinker. 

Erom church and state, my attention flits — I want to 
hear what the women are saying. Their voices have ebbed 
low, but from Bernardette’s expression, I suspect she is talk- 
ing of her children. 

I ask Ernest news of his daughter. He is non-commit- 
tal and dispassionate. Calls her “spirited” — he probably 
knows I have scent of the last gossip. 

Mademoiselle Bonnet, to judge from the photograph 
her father showed me, must be precocious ; she seems a very 
little girl to be such a cause of scandal in Tours, to prove 
such a stumbling-block to the community. Her picture 
showed her independent, determined not to resemble her 
parents, not to inherit one of their features. 

My wife came to look, she took the slip of cardboard 
from me and studied it. I saw she was trying to visualize 
the child grown up, following the little girl into woman- 
hood, foreseeing with kind wishes this embryo life. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 

“A word spoken in due season how good it is.” 

Proverbs . 

Jaitoaky 1 , 1893. To-day has been the crucial day of 
my life, my future hung in the balance to-day, hovered in 
the scales. But to begin from the beginning. 

The crudest moment for the author whose imagination 
has deserted him, whose creative faculty has played him 
false, is the first minute of waking. The pad and pencil 
placed within reach of his hand mock him, the calendar 
facing his bed seems a reproach nailed to the wall, the testi- 
mony of another empty, sterile day, another day lost, another 
chance of immortal fame the less. 

I opened my eyes to just such frenzied presages this 
morning, “What are you doing with your precious time, with 
your little span of life?” all the homely objects about me 
insisted, and lying still in the dawn, I realised that my life 
was ticking away to the rhythm of my watch under the bol- 
ster. 

I had forgotten to close the shutters and on the window 
the frost had traced an enigmatic message in crystal hiero- 
glyphs. On the floor a shirt trailed ghastly and everything 
pale shimmered from the stretch of looking-glass over the 
mantel to the white panels of my wife’s bedroom door. 

I pictured her sleeping, her cheek cupped in her hand,- 
only her lashes and her soft breathing breast astir. I envied 
her sleep, sleep as sweet as a child’s, a child trained to 
nightly ask for a sentinel angel at each bed-post. Sometimes 
I suspect Bernardette is simple, credulous, old-fashioned 
enough to invoke Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; I don’t 
aver it, however, for who can fathom a woman’s prayers. 

239 


240 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


Now as I lay in the dawn, bitterly wakeful, cruelly intro- 
spective, the days I had just lived through filed in review 
before me hour by hour, and I knew I had lost of late all 
faith in myself, all trust in my destiny. 

This last year, I realised, had been pure waste to me. 
I had nothing to show for it, not a consecutive line, all my 
efforts to concentrate had proved useless. 

I tried to remember when this dissolution in my brain 
had first come about, when my mind had ceased to serve 
me, I traced the waning of my talent to about the date of 
my renewed intimacy with Marie-Therese. She had de- 
manded such magnificent things of v me, her ambition for 
me had seemed so colossal, she had asked so much of my 
brain that she had stultified its power. 

I did not resent her influence exactly, it was not her I 
blamed — I was at fault. Impressionable, weak, sick with 
sensibility, I was not fit for public life. Why then not ac- 
cept my limitations, content myself with an obscure exist- 
ence, agree to be forgotten by the public? Because I need 
notoriety, I admit it. Interviews, demands for autographs, 
the flattery of women, pretty sycophants to success. 

In the dawn, “I wish,” thought I, “I had some early 
manuscript I could publish just to keep my memory afloat 
with the public until my brain renews itself. What a prob- 
lem!” And suddenly I must have devised a solution for I 
relaxed, yawned, turned to the wall and fell asleep. 

The solution, however, I dared not face until the light 
had waned and the winter night was closing in. Then it 
was I opened my desk and took out the Roumistorf’s poems. 
For a moment on the black oak lid, the manuscript lay de- 
fined, a pale oblong, and it took an effort of the will to touch 
it, to roll it, to put it in my pocket. I felt the spell of the 
dusk, of the disquieting hour, hour of presage, of foreboding, 
when beasts are restless, children lonely, and sick men yearn 
for drugs. 

I did not let myself think too closely of what I was doing. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


241 


“Now I shall have a span of quiet,” I said within myself. 
“Marie-Therese will cease for a time to press me for work.” 
And I went downstairs making for the street door, hut as I 
passed the library, I was arrested by what I saw. 

I shall never grow accustomed to beauty, however famil- 
iar its form. My aesthetic sense will never be dulled, and 
even the hackneyed picture of a woman teaching or caressing 
her children can never fail to enchant and surprise me. 

The genial light of a good fire suffused the library, 
played over my hook-shelves and struck a gleam here and 
there from a gilt-backed volume, warmed the deep comfort- 
able chairs and the drawn curtains, glowed on the English 
andirons — Bernardette’s proud find, — and over the little gilt 
clock that chimed pleasantly as though it marked only sweet 
and honest hours. 

My wife had drawn her chair into the full light of the 
hearth — one narrow foot rested on the fender, her raised knee 
supported her elbow, and in her open palm her chin nestled. 
She was looking down at her hoys who sat on the floor close 
to the hem of her skirt. She was confiding something to 
them, something very serious for she kept frowning and 
shaking her head. Then suddenly she smiled and sitting 
erect, lifted her finger in an arresting fashion while her 
eyes widened with naive wonder as though to say, “Did 
you mark that, isn’t that extraordinary? — but just hold your 
breath and listen to this!” And all her expressions were 
instantly reflected on her children’s faces as they gaped up 
at her attentive, for it was a fairy-tale their mother was tell- 
ing them, a story of enchantment, of palpitant adventure. 

I came behind her and stood listening. I waited. I 
hardly knew why unless I really wanted to hear what it 
was the Princess said to the Prince when at last he rescued 
her and “they lived happily ever after.” I wanted to hear 
what was Bemardette’s idea of happiness and how she inter- 
preted it to her children. 

At first I listened, curious, critical, out of sympathy, 


242 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


annoyed by the reiterations, tbe “once upon a time,” “the 
beautiful princess who loved tbe prince,” “tbe prince wbo 
loved tbe beautiful princess,” phrases eternally repeated, tbe 
litany of fairy-tales. But gradually I grew more intent, I 
became grave, I felt tbe charm of tbe phrasing, of tbe pretty 
singular turns of speech peculiar to women, and gradually 
I came under tbe spell of tbe nursery fable, of the old, old 
legend of love and virtue, of beauty and youth and gay 
courage triumphant. 

It occurred to me, now when our poor literature is so 
divided, so extreme, either in tbe heights or in tbe depths, 
on tbe windy summits of romanticism or in tbe mud of tbe 
realistic school, that a love story, a modern romance, a path- 
ological study of passion told with an archaic simplicity, 
naively in tbe form of a fairy-tale would be poignant, sin- 
gular, arresting. 

A woman when she dreams aloud to her children and tells 
them her fancies, is a poet. I listened standing beyond tbe 
•radius of the firelight, fascinated, spell-bound. Bernar- 
dette’s voice seemed to breathe new life into me. I revived, 
began to hope once more, to feel that I might write again 
some day — some day soon perhaps, and I kept very still for 
fear my wife should guess my presence and cease her story. 

The emotion I experienced was sweet, a renewal of youth, 
of inspiration, a revival of the sublime arrogance of my 
teens. This time I had caught the drift of a story worth 
the telling and my mind’s eye saw, down the vista of the 
years, success beckoning. 

I breathed deep — in my breast-pocket something crackled 
— the Roumistorf’s manuscript! 

1 These poems could not serve me now, they were not 
worthy of me. I could do better, I could afford to give up 
these verses, I felt so sure of my futura Suppose, late as 
it was after all these years, I made amends to the Princess, 
suppose I fulfilled her trust, wiped off the old score I owed 
her. Now that Colbert was dead, his readers scattered and 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


243 


changed, I had only one lie to confess — my lie to Marie- 
Therese. To he sure if I did confide in her, she would gos- 
sip, spread the scandal — well let her, what of it. My future 
work I vowed should assure me an unassailable position, and 
then and there I determined to resign the Roumistorf’s 
poems, to hand them over to Marie-Therese and ask her to 
publish them under their rightful author’s name. I decided 
to make my restitution instantly, to go to Marie-Therese 
that second, and I turned and left the room quietly without 
letting Bernardette know I had overheard her, been close to 
her. 

I was glad it was dusk and the lamps unlighted. I was 
glad Marie-Therese had turned from the window and that 
her face showed only as a dark mask. I was glad she let me 
talk myself out before she spoke, then she only said : 

“Poor Armand, I never knew before you had a con- 
science, you must have met your guardian angel lately. 
Well, well, your secret is safe with me. I give you my word 
and my word is sacred. I never break a promise, I have a 
high sense of honour.” And as I gaped dumbfounded by 
this statement, “Only mine is not a woman’s, hut a man’s 
sense of honour,” concluded Marie-Therese. 

In silence I handed her the manuscript, she took it with- 
out a word. I felt I was giving her in my demission, resign- 
ing from her cause — the cause of this Marie-Therese whom 
I had served in the flesh, then in the spirit for so long. 

“I am like a school-hoy to-day,” I told her, “full of energy 
and dreams and it is high time I set to work for I have a 
long score of laziness to wipe out. Perhaps I’ll go to Tours, 
have Bernardette keep house for me there where I can he 
quiet and write, what do you think of my notion f ’ 

Marie-Therese’s answer was irrelevant. “How love has 
changed him,” she said as though to herself. 

“Love?” I asked perplexed, “love has changed me? love 
for whom ?” 

“For your wife.” 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


244 

I laughed, incredulous. 

“Yes, yes, you adore her, you have for years. Don’t 
you know it, why you’re head over heels in love with her.” 

“I only wish it were so,” I said in all sincerity, “we 
would be the happier for it, both she and I, hut I am a Bo- 
hemian and we Bohemians are lawless and cannot love the 
woman the Lord gives us.” 

“That was neatly said,” gibed Marie-Therese in the 
dark, and dismissed me with the pressure of her cold fingers. 

It is not three hours since I left Madame Colbert, turned 
my back on her and yet I feel another man as though I had 
shaken hands with the past. Here I sit in my study, in the 
radius of my lamp, in the warm reassuring glow that never 
burns down, for Bernardette herself sees to the wick, she 
never fails me in these trivial things. Certainly she keeps 
me comfortable, content, very near to happy. What a wife 
she might have been if she were only as brilliant a woman 
as she is a good housekeeper. 


CHAPTER XXXIX 


“The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her. . . 

“She looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the 

bread of idleness.” 

Proverbs. 

“. . . And sweetly doth she order all things.” 

The Wisdom of Solomon. 

This is all I care to quote of my diary, this diary, what 
a pitiful self-revelation, the unconscious story of an artist, 
always yearning and craving, straining after the invisible, 
divining a feminine breath in the scent of a flower, a femi- 
nine heart-heat in the throbbing of music, the mystery of 
love in the face of some woman in the street, while all the 
time here at his side, within reach of his arms — though he 
never knew, never recognised her — the irony, the pity of it ! 
The rest of my story, the mirage I lived in, the false dream 
from which I woke too late, I can tell all this better in 
retrospect. 

I suppose in every man’s life there comes a breathing 
spell as it were, a span of content, a few years of sameness 
and peace when the heart ceases to heat at high pressure. It 
is as though Nature said, “This human machine has many 
new vibrations to endure. I will put it away, unhook the 
wheels of sensibility, let it rest for a bit or it will jar itself 
to pieces before its warranted time.” 

I remember the first morning after our arrival in Tours, 
for I had carried out my purpose and installed myself and 
my family in my native town, the better to give time to my 
new book, my soul’s darling project, I remember as I stood 
at the window of our house, my old home, once my mother’s, 
and looked out into the familiar street, I felt the lull, the 

245 


246 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


soporific calm of the provinces. The hells of the parish 
church were striking the quarter. It was the same old chime 
played slowly with a pause now and then as though memory 
failed, in a quavering, hushing voice that suggested a lullaby 
more than a reveille. I remember I was oppressed by a 
sort of sweet sadness, I thought of my mother, I wished she 
were alive and could know that since my marriage I had 
worked hard and accomplished something and was spoken 
of in the world by the name she had given me. 

Since my boyhood, our street showed few changes. There 
was the same cabaret opposite, the same grocery at the comer 
with its scarlet awning fluttering, the same aristocratic man- 
sions dying hard behind barred doors; only facing me a 
little to the right, I noticed that a facade I had always seen 
shuttered had opened its blinds wide, and suddenly I realised 
this was now Ernest’s house whose many windows stared 
across at me. I looked back indifferently enough, I had no 
premonition that there across the pavement, in this building 
within a stone’s throw, behind that massive door whose lintel 
was supported by two sirens worn blind by the tears of the 
rain, the motive power of my near future was hidden wait- 
ing to come towards me through the dark porch. 

I have little to tell of the first years that followed our 
removal to Tours. My life was given to work, if work is to 
write down the dictates of the heart, the promptings of the 
imagination, my book crowned by the Academy dates from 
this period, a love-story told in the form of a fairy-tale; 
“Once upon a Time” I called it. It is the only bit of my 
work that almost satisfies me. At any rate I know I am 
capable of nothing finer. 

Never before or since have I been so held, gripped by 
my fancy, it blotted out the world, time seemed to stand 
still and I remember when I wrote “Finis” at the end of my 
last chapter, how shocked I was to find the years had been 
moving on, to realise that the two little sons I had brought 


A WOMAN’S MAN- 


247 


with me to Tours were grown into two long hobbledehoys 
ready to go to Paris to boarding-school, to enter the Lycee. 

I recall how they came to me in my study to say good- 
bye. Their mother had told them I should want to see 
them and might have some advice to give them. I glanced 
up from my desk feeling vaguely uncomfortable, vaguely at 
a loss. The two boys were waiting, deferential, and with 
their high foreheads, narrow faces and long noses, they were 
preposterously like me — they had not my brows though, but 
their mother’s and her eyes. And I remember as I talked, 
fidgeting with my paper-weight, they looked at me as she did 
sometimes with a long, intent, spell-bound look that discon- 
certed me absolutely. 

“I worked well this afternoon,” I remember I told Ber- 
nardette at dinner that evening, and she answered, 

“Yes, there is not a sound in the house now.” And I 
knew she was thinking that the children were gone. 

She was anxious at first, Paris is a big city. She 
went to see her boys every Thursday half-holiday and would 
come home with pink cheeks, anxious to tell me all the news, 
and I would say, “Good, good, I am glad, bravo. Guess 
where I am in my book to-day, what chapter I reached,” and 
Bemardette being a woman and anxious to please, would 
guess wrong, a few chapters short so that I could say, “Not 
a bit of it, I am way beyond.” 

I find it difficult to give the note of these ten or twelve 
uneventful years. If I were a musician and ctfuld express 
my life by a sonata, I would play a motif here all in one key, 
or better still, strike just one chord and hold it till it echoed 
away, and yet in so far as my nature was concerned, these 
years were not without incident or change. 

In Paris I used to say, “I hate the world — people.” I 
ridiculed the Parisian salons, their frivolity, their boring 
nullity. And no wonder, how could I think well of a society 
that never surfeited me with praise, never flattered and 
cajoled me extravagantly, in short, did not pay me half 


243 


A WOMANS MAN 


enough attention or make half enough fuss over me ? In the 
capital I always ran the chance of meeting a greater man 
than I. I was only one novelist among a shoal in Paris, 
while here in Tours — ah, no wonder I donned my dres&- 
clothes with a smile and that the sight of my opera hat was 
sweet to me, for here I was unique and almighty among my 
breed, I was the town’s celebrity, its representative man of 
letters. 

It was Bernardette who gradually led me among my fel- 
lows, who induced me to visit my kind, to frequent society. 
If it had not been for her, I would have stayed at home and 
railed against my townsmen because they did not flock to 
pay me homage. 

A woman when she loves has the insight of the Sybil, 
the worldly wisdom of the serpent. Love is her genius, her 
divining rod. Bernardette knew instinctively when she 
could serve me, wheedle a critic or draw him over to her 
cause by her silence; guided by the blind impulses of her 
heart, she made me popular, she found me readers, admirers, 
friends, for without friends no fame is possible for a man. 
The human factor is essential to success, an author’s ac- 
quaintances are his best press agents. I admitted as much 
to Bernardette, I told her an author must be seen in society 
to be read. In the old days when Bohemia was banned from 
the salons, every artist had his patron to represent him in 
the world. Nowadays the ban is removed and the poet is 
forced to come down from his garret, put on a frock-coat and 
blow his own trumpet. I do not recall if she answered, but 
I remember I looked at her with pleasure. 

It was in April, I think, or somewhere in the early 
spring, the window of my study was thrown wide and Ber- 
nardette stood in the full sunlight clipping the gillyflow- 
ers that kept the sill gay. Click, click, went the big scissors 
as her deft wrist turned and twisted. Sometimes I saw the 
outside of her arm and then the inner side where the skin 
showed whitest, blue with delicate veins, while all the while 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


249 


her fingers manipulating the heavy shears moved incessantly, 
fluttering the five pink finger-tips drew together, then spread 
wide disclosing the palm. 

At times, I remember, Bernardette paused and looked up, 
the sun on her throat, and on tip-toe she stretched out her 
arm to prune the vine that encroached upon my window and 
kept the light out of my room. 

I remember, seen from this angle, framed in the blue, 
the sun athwart her, her head turned from me in an un- 
familiar pose, she looked another woman, a lovely stranger, 
her face was new to me. 

Never shall I accustom myself to beauty in its acutest 
form, to the infinite complex perplexing beauty of women. 
In a sense I shall he afraid of it always. Why, when I was 
a boy, before I met the little ballet-girl Marianne, I could 
not look a woman in the face, I could not meet her glance, I 
could not endure it. Even before my mother’s friends, mid 1 
dle-aged women in whose lives I could never count, women 
who looked at me casually, indulgently as at a child — even 
before them, my eyes shifted as though I had seen Isis, the 
terrible, the excruciatingly lovely, rise within reach of me 
and let fall her veil. 

Since then the goddess has given me both hands and 
leapt down off the pedestal. I have felt her breath on my 
face, the rhythmic wonder of her body, I have found her 
more flesh than spirit, a barbarian for all her taught man- 
ners, for all her imposing pretty ways — a child, and yet I 
am no less in awe of her. 

I fear her, I fear her cause, I fear all she inflicts; I 
have suffered in her service the torturing subtleties of senti- 
ment, the torment of unassuaged desires, the fury of inad- 
missible appetites, jealousy — that incendiary pain — I have 
endured it all. I have known the sting of hurt vanity when 
a casual speech or a light good-bye, has shown me the fatu- 
ous fool I am. I have known the melancholy of interrupted 
intimacies, of thwarted sympathies, the obsession of a face 


250 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


glimpsed in a crowd, the regret of having perhaps elbowed 
happiness that day and passed it. Above all I have suffered 
from the masonic secrecy of women, their perverse reticence, 
their spasmodic reserve. 

My flatterers tell me that I understand Eve’s nature, a 
friendly critic once called me: “our best exponent of fem- 
ininity.” I was elated, hut I knew better. Why, I could not 
even sum up the pretty provincial who was my wife, whom I 
had seen grow up from a child. What manner of woman 
was she exactly? Nothing ultrawonderful certainly, some- 
what common-place perhaps, slightly hourgeoise maybe, and 
yet, I have stored in my memory some lovely pictures of 
her. 

I remember I would he hurrying out, intent on my own 
business, deep in my own thoughts, when sometimes on the 
stairs she passed me. I would lean against the baluster 
while she went by with a pretty ceremony, taking care not to 
brush against me, but when she stood a step or so above, she 
would pause, look back over her shoulder and her smile 
would be prolonged, verified in her dark, tender eyes. 

I Eor an instant she would poise hesitant, then swiftly turn 
and go her way, be off to her duties, and housekeeping seemed 
a pretty trade when she set about it. 

I would look after her . . . the stair well was full of 
light, I remember, the wrought-iron balustrade shone, the 
shallow stone steps stretched up at an easy grade suffused 
with sun; down in the hall a cage of starlings kept up a 
zealous racket — my house was very home-like in those days. 

When business drove me to Paris, I was often glad to 
get back to Tours. Many men of distinguished mind have 
preferred the Provinces to the capital ; the psychologist finds 
something stimulating in the atmosphere of a small town, 
the petty heart of the community beats in plain sight ready 
for the lens — not so the heart of a city, shifting, complex, 
composite, deep-hidden. During this stage I rarely left 
Tours but I returned, with a sigh of relief. No unsophisti- 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


251 


cated monk, set adrift in the world and accustomed to the 
self-indulgence of inaction and irresponsibility, ever came 
back to his monastery with more contentment than I to my 
house. I was happy to turn the handle of my door, to be 
engulfed in the peace of my home. I grew really domestic, 
I who theoretically believe in the education of vice, in the 
development of the artist through orgies, debauches, the 
process called seeing life, I stretched out my feet in carpet 
slippers, like a bland bourgeois. 

To be sure though I was a little ashamed of my homing 
instincts, my virtue, my smug serenity and indeed it seems 
odd that an artist as super-susceptible as I, as sensitive to 
the tyranny of beauty, to feminine lures, to the carnival 
tune of sex, should have been entirely happy at his own fire- 
side with his feet on the fender, but the fact is the literary 
man, the abstruse thinker, rebels against any definite con- 
tradictory actions, any revolution of his habits, he finds it 
almost as difficult to break away from an ordered life as 
from a life of debauch, and I had fallen under the spell of 
domesticity. 

I relied on my house for studious peace, for inspiration, 
for happiness even; unless perhaps it was on she who kept 
my house that I depended, on the woman herself. It may 
have been so, but if so, I did not know it. 

Tor ten or twelve years, nothing occurred to interrupt 
the sober, placid tenor of my life. My homing instincts 
swerved to be sure, now and then, and I cannot imply that 
I was an ideal co-dweller. No, I proved myself fantastic*- 
tempered and voraciously selfish, nor can I pretend that I 
was even faithful to my wife — I was not, but my amours' 
were transitory, a question of humour, hour, opportunity, a 
genial meal, the flowing bowl, the Parisian atmosphere — 
mere fevers of the blood, a cult of femininity, general and 
impersonal and not worth the recording. Intrigues so 
ephemeral, so epidermal as hardly to be dignified by the 
name of infidelities. 


252 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


If I felt at fault towards my wife, it was for quite an- 
other reason. I wronged her in this that try as I might, I 
could not share her enthusiasm over her children. To he 
sure, as they grew, I interested myself, in a sense, in them 
or perhaps it is more correct to say I was curious about 
them. They inspired me with a sentiment I cannot pretend 
to analyse, it partook of the nature of jealousy and regret. 
I was embittered against them — the older generation sour- 
ing against the new. As their voices cracked, as their upper 
lips shaded, these boys became to me acutely irritating. As 
I say, I cannot define why, but there the fact is. 

I ought, I suppose, to have been proud of my sons. 
They did well at school. Once when I found time, their 
mother showed me their prizes, their final examinations were 
quite showy, I believe. Lucien is an engineer now and 
Jacques is in the Diplomatic Service. They are both get- 
ting on satisfactorily. As young men rank nowadays, you 
would call them successful, forging ahead and all that. But 
I sometimes wonder if they will go as far in life and as high 
as their mother hoped. She counted so on them, she thought 
them very like me. 

Boor boys, poor mother! I remember the excitement of 
the little household fetes, the surprise parties of the holi- 
days, all the home traffic to which I lent myself passively. 
There were moments in all this domesticity that bored me — 
the visits to my parents-in-law, for instance. 

Against Madame Anselme I had no grudge, but her 
husband was to me a portentous personality. I had never 
been able to overcome my awe of this charlatan of oppor- 
tunity, this juggler of money. The practical man, the man 
of action is often overpowering, discomposing to the thinker, 
the artist. I felt very small in the eyes of Bernardette’s 
father. I knew that despite my literary orders, my news- 
paper notices, my notoriety, Anselme would have preferred 
a son-in-law in his own business, a smart fellow ready to 
serve as partner and carry on the manufactory. My father- 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


253 


in-law saw me as combining tbe disqualifications of a roue 
and a prig, and really bis just, prosaic judgment was so op- 
pressive that in self-respect I was often prompted to break 
with him. I will say Bernardette showed considerable tact 
in keeping us at even a relative truce. 

Since my return to Tours, I had renewed my friendship 
with Ernest, that is we frequented each other’s house, and 
on the street we met with the loud exuberance of our past 
youth, but somehow the old savour of our sympathy, our 
congeniality, our partnership of mind, was lost. 

The fact is, I could not accustom myself to this ladies’ 
doctor, with his syrupy lisp, his soft tread and servile smile. 
I could not identify this smug personage with the Ernest 
I once knew, that lanky, witty, cynical, most diabolical of 
boys. Yes, the real Ernest inordinately full of ambition, 
of crafty appetites, was well hidden now, padded away in 
the folds of a reassuring double chin and respectable paunch. 
He wore his forehead nobly bald — not a rakish tonsure, 
mind you — no, but temples scorched by the student’s lamp, 
devastated by the high pressure of thought, and it was this 
dome-like exposure of brow as well as his gold-rimmed spec- 
tacles and black gloves that bestowed on Ernest, even while 
he looked at your tongue or handed you the bill, an air of 
apostolic sweetness. I hardly know why I write of Dr. 
Bonnet as though he had been unmasked and proved a ruf- 
fian. As a matter of fact, his life is blameless so far as I 
know; he heads charity lists and passes for a sacerdotal 
lamb, and yet I always feel, though certainly I have no jus- 
tification for so feeling, that it is only continual luck keeps 
our family physician from being the biggest rogue unhung. 

One trait of his in particular offended me. He never 
lost his grip on the main chance, nothing could shake his 
tense, obstinate cupidity, he made business out of everything, 
coined money out of his very mistakes, his failures, his most 
sacred misfortunes. When his daughter ran away from 
school in Pains and took to studying for the stage while in- 


254 


A WOMAN’S MAN - 


ddentally living with some actor — I never knew the rights 
of the story, — Ernest as the dishonoured father edified 
Tours. He couldn’t mention youth, spring, girlhood, hut he 
took out his pocket-handkerchief and staunched a manly tear. 
He was very picturesque and got himself several new pa- 
tients. 

I It was “Poor dear Hr. Bonnet!” here, and “Poor dear 
good Dr. Bonnet”! there, while fans flapped and heads 
wagged. Monsieur le Prefet had his version, Mademoiselle 
Bonnet’s elocution master was the man. Monsieur le Maire 
was not reticent of his theory, nor was Monsieur le Com- 
mandant-General of his — a Rabelaisian reading — for it was 
all one into whatever salon you stepped, gossip clucked, scan- 
dal hissed, and the young girls were ordered out into the 
garden to see if the vegetation had sprung up over night. 

Strangely enough, considering Ernest and I were neigh- 
bours, yet only once had I seen his disreputable, stage- 
struck child, his crazy cdbotme of a daughter. She was 
snuggled in his arms then, swaddled in baby clothes, mouth- 
ing and inarticulate, and I had had no premonition that here, 
whimpering, clutching at the air, was the beginning of big, 
bitter things, of a career, of an artist’s life, for successful 
or no, there is nothing so stressful, out of hell, as the experi- 
ences of talent. 

I had heard Luce was something of a genius and I felt 
sorry for her. I for one pity and distrust women of phe- 
nomenal artistic gifts. The law of compensation decrees 
talent merely as a sop in the stead of a happy, normal life. 
In women especially, artistic ability is mostly founded on 
some taint. In particular it is so of actresses, since histrionic 
art is often nothing but a facility for tantrums, a sort of 
divine hysteria. 

I was not surprised at the rumours that reached Tours 
and kept the town humming. Mademoiselle de Lille — Luce 
had exchanged the homely name Bonnet for the more flowery 
appellation of de Lille — was in the full swing of notoriety. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


255 


We heard of her rich “ Angel,” we heard of her rebellious 
heart, of her flights to Montmartre with “l’amant du coeur,” 
sentimental escapades that left her temporarily stranded, 
cold-shouldered by the “Angel,” momentarily unprotected 
until the next protector offered to hoist her up a few more 
rungs of the theatrical ladder. 

It was all very noisome, Tours thought, and disinherited 
Mademoiselle Bonnet. However, in the light of her subse- 
quent success — a prize at the Conservatoire — an engagement 
at the Comedie Frangaise, — the town softened, claimed its 
own and put up the plea of “temperament.” 

“What is she like to look at?” I asked of my wife who 
knew the girl. 

“Strange,” said she, “especially her eyes.” 

“How do you mean her eyes are strange — intelligent? 
dissipated ?” i 

“Yes, all that perhaps, hut something else. She has the 
beautiful eyes cripples sometimes have.” 

I was not much the wiser, Bernardette could never ex- 
press herself. 

I decided to form my own opinion, see the girl for my- 
self, and the first time I noticed her name placarded outside' 
the Comedie Frangaise, I joined the queue that stretched 
from the box-office to the corner of the street. I 

It was a February afternoon, bitterly windy, stinging 
cold. The House of Moliere — that temple of tradition, that 
holy of holies of theatrical art, loomed shabbily feudal, im- 
pressively grimy for all the silver magic of the frost. 

Wedged into the crowd, I inched along stamping, shuf- 
fling, the ice eating into the soles of my feet. Each time I 
craned forward, I saw de Mussuet’s statue, cruelly, coldly 
white as though the very spirit of winter inflated the poet’s 
cloak. 

I concluded I was wasting my time and had better look 
after the business that had brought me to Paris for the day. 
I was just about to turn when I realised I stood within arm’s 


256 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


reach of the box-office, a little more edging and elbowing and 
I was rewarded with a ticket. 

The play was a Classic — “L’ami des Femmes,” I think. 
I had no programme, hut at the first glance I recognised 
Ernest’s daughter. She was the short blonde woman — I had 
heard she was small. But no, here she came, of course — 
how like her father — his eyes, his trick of speech — unless — 
something wrong here, this was an actress I knew — this was 
Geniat. At last here she was, the image of her mother. On 
second thoughts though — I was in a maze. 

In the entr’acte I signalled for a programme. I opened 
it — her name was not there. Had I made a mistake ? The 
placard outside the theatre had misled me. I had read the 
evening hill — Mademoiselle de Lille was not playing in the 
Matinee. 

I left the theatre, business filled in the rest of my day. 
I took the night train — I was hack in Tours and I had not 
yet seen the girl. 


CHAPTER XL 


“How fair and how pleasant art thou 0 love for delights.” 

Song of Solomon . 

“Thou hast the dew of thy youth.” 

Psalms. 

Some months later in spring, in April, I first saw her. 
I felt in the strangest mood. It was my birthday — I was 
forty-seven. 

This growing old is a gradual business, but the full hor- 
ror of it comes on you of a sudden — in a flash. I remember 
I drew back from the page over which I was bent, the pencil 
trembled in my hand and I looked up as though I heard a 
voice calling my name. 

All about me was the reassuring influence of my study. 
The sweet familiar room in which so much of my life had 
ebbed. The flowers on the mantel marked my birthday. My 
birthday! My face contracted as it does when we grow 
older, my chin settled on my breast, I sat for a while mo- 
tionless and I forgot my work. 

My work! So this was it — all these littlq black marks 
drawn on a page. Literature, it was called, and according 
to the spirit of the reader it was judged good or bad. What 
a graceless task this reproducing life with words. Words! 
my God, as though the throbbing of the heart, the leaping of 
the pulses, the contraction of the throat through fear, the 
simplest of our torments, the most primal of our pleasures* 
could be expressed by means of a vocabulary, by the help 
of printed paragraphs, of a few black marks on paper. Sure- 
ly literature is the dumbest of all the arts. A trill on a vio- 
lin can tell more than a three-volume novel. 

Impatient, irritated, I pushed away my pad, I flung 
257 


258 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


'down my pencil. I wandered about the room, I halted be- 
fore the glass — long and sternly my reflection looked back 
at me, staring with my eyes from over its pince-nez. 

So this was I. Strange, but I did not feel as old, as 
conventional, as prosy as I looked. Concentration, study, 
ravage a man’s good looks — intelligence has its stigma. I 
would have preferred more brutal, grossly animal features, 
one of those gladiatorial jaws so irresistible to women, not 
this reflection that faced me, not this refined spiritual head, 
chiselled in the dreary lines of thought. Even as I looked, 
I knew that for this intellectual face peaked and set as a 
mask, the bloom of life was over. Between now and the 
grave, I should not meet love again, only sufferance, only 
the tolerance that money can buy or the false sentiment, the 
false transports, very vain women lavish on a celebrity. 
Whatever can be imitated in passion would be offered me 
again. Again I should hear all those sweet, silly words that 
are the litany of love, but not the voice of love, not the deep, 
racking accents of sincerity. T should never again hear that 
voice — it was lost for me, gone, stilled with my youth. 
Youth! divine, insensate! Eaust in his study was never 
sadder than I that day. If out of the cupboard the red 
Mephisto had sprung, I, too, would have signed away my 
soul. 

Bestless, I turned from my image, went to the window, 
threw it wide, leant on the sill and looked out — spring was 
in the air, over the opposite gables, the swallows circled, an 
odour of tar from a newly mended pavement, the fragrance 
of sap, rural scents of foliage, of bloom pulsed in the wind 
and I felt a fresh breath on the crown of my head where the 
hair had begun to thin. 

The street was empty except for a closed fiacre that rat- 
tled along apace, a trunk lurching on the roof. The cab- 
horse, a wiry little brute, spirited for once, pulled amain 
and the ramshackle vehicle sheered off gaily towards the op- 
posite pavement and drew up before Ernest’s house. The 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


259 


trunk gave a final plunge, the carriage-door flew open, a 
girlish figure sprang out, made the porch steps in a leap, 
and I heard the clear, sweet sound of a young woman’s voice, 
a quick, rippling phrase all in one breath, laughter throbbing 
through it. 

Ernest’s daughter, without a doubt! The prodigal re- 
turned. She stood in the recess of the archway, her back 
turned to me. I could discern her dimly in the shadow of the 
porch, in the gloom of the big pillars. The door opened and 
the dark house engulfed her. 

I watched her trunk lifted down from the cab. I watched 
the cabman paid, I saw him drive away. Long after the 
street was empty I stayed at the window. What a mild, 
sunny day, what a beatific sky! With every moment the 
spring came on. I wished I had seen her face, she moved 
as if she were pretty. 

As I turned back to my desk, as I revised the morning’s 
work, a sense of dissatisfaction, of melancholy surged over 
me. I realised my life was dull, the vital sensations that 
make an artist were being denied to me. 

At lunch, I remember, I was poor company, I jeered and 
scoffed and uttered poisoned epigrams. My wit was sharp 
as vitriol I pointed out to Bernardette that she, like all 
women of the middle-class, had a mania for family functions 
— anniversaries, what I might call “In Memoriam” parties. 
Why all this gaiety to-day? Because I was a. year older? 
God forbid, I should prove a kill-joy, she and the children 
were free to jubilate over the fact that I was forty-seven, 
but personally, though possibly I was obtuse, I could not 
see the point of the joke, nor of the flowers and the rib- 
bons and all the rest of it. What was she trying to do any- 
way ? Consolidate her home ? Well, after all perhaps, her 
instinct prompted right, the Catholic Church is held to- 
gether by its constant celebrations, its rigorous respect for 
dates, but frankly I found this family gaiety a little trying, 
the spirit of this fete reminded me somewhat of the title of 


260 A WOMAN’S MAN 

a book I bad once read — “Jokes or You Will and Must 
Laugh.” 

I refused to go on some outing she had arranged for 
that afternoon. I locked myself in my study instead, but 
no sooner was I alone than I felt sociable again, genial, 
garrulous. I decided to cross the street and step into the 
house opposite on the chance of finding Ernest at home. 

The doctor was on his rounds, the servant told me. 
He was expected back, however, any minute. Did I care to 
wait? Madame was in the garden and Mademoiselle too. 

Curiosity is the hall-mark of the provinces, the epidemic 
of small towns. Egoist though I was, I had caught the germ, 
for I remember, as in the servant’s wake I hurried through 
the corridor, I felt elated at last to see Ernest’s daughter, 
the scarlet woman of Tours. 

Poor girl, to judge from my glimpse of her this morn- 
ing, she could not weather many years of the theatre. She 
had not the endurance, the physical force. She had seemed 
to me joyously frail, immature, flute-voiced as a child. Art, 
dissipation would shatter her health, the capricious public 
break her heart. Hers would be the fate of every artist 
who has no physical stamina, whose constitution is not of 
iron. She had lived on her nerves and accomplished prodi- 
gies so far, but a fine ambition, a proud will must give way 
in time. “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” is as 
much the cry of Bohemia as the cry of hell. 

And yet what indomitable vitality, what palpitant life, 
what secret and surprising strength a delicate body can hide ! 
What did I know of this girl except that she was small and 
soprano-voiced and decadently childish — what did that 
prove ? 

I was consumed with eagerness to see her close, to speak 
with her. As always when I was about to meet a stranger, 
I felt unduly agitated. What did this actress know of me ? 
Beyond a doubt she had heard me discussed. What were the 
younger artists predicting for me ? Lasting fame or a wan- 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


261 


ing popularity, an inglorious memory? This girl was of 
Bohemia, she knew my real standing in the world of art, she 
knew if my work was called old-fashioned, if the new gen- 
eration laughed when my back was turned. What would 
her manner he, how would she greet me ? Pshaw, what did 
it matter! Best make friends with her, try my hand at 
a play for her. She might prove useful, get me a hearing at 
the Comedie Frangaise, keep me in touch, with the theatres. 

I had keyed myself to meet her and felt disappointed to 
only find her mother. The flaccid Madame Bonnet was en- 
sconced in a Chinese summer-house and sat like an idol in 
its pagoda. She stirred, however, at my approach, made 
room for me at the wicker table over which her sewing was 
spread, and even before I could take the chair she offered^ 
she confided in a whisper, with shifty glances out into the 
garden, her latest grievance. 

It seemed her daughter’s visit was a surprise. No one 
had thought Luce would dare to come home again ; really it 
was incredible of the girl and incredibly impudent, hut then 
Luce never considered any one but herself, never had and 
never would. Did she care if she scandalised, scared away 
her father’s patients ? Not she. Ernest, poor fellow, though 
he had sworn to he done with her, had greeted her open- 
armed, sobbing, quite unmanned by her sudden appearance. 
The first emotion — the parental heart — an only daughter — 
you understand, hut now Heaven only knew how long she 
meant to stay. Perhaps until her next role called her to 
Paris. It was very awkward. What did I, as a man of the 
world, advise? 

I watched Madame Bonnet’s grey curls tapping on her 
forehead in the breeze, and I felt that on such a lovely day 
when the spring was doing its best to assert itself . . . 

and just then I lost trend of my thoughts. I started, I looked 
round, I had heard a light step on the gravel, an impetuous 
rush of skirts, a rustling as of wings or of drapery as though 
Primavera were coming up the path. The hydrangea bushes 


262 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


swayed and separated, and the girl I wanted to see stood 
looking np at me, narrowing her eyes in the sun, holding her 
cloak taut over her dress, and breathing quick as if she had 
come running. 

She was hatless, her brown head suffused with light and 
in the wind her short hair, cut like a child’s and all disor- 
dered, stirred incessantly. Now and then a tendril rose erect, 
quivered and sank down over her intricate pink ear along 
her bronzed neck or against the dwindling oval of her face. 

For an instant she stared me in the eyes with the deep 
appraising look peculiar to women who live by their wits, 
who can gauge an opportunity at sight and sum up a man in 
a glance. Then, “I need not ask who you are,” she said with 
the far-carrying voice of the actress. “I have heard about 
you so often, I have seen so many of your photographs. I 
recognise you, Monsieur de Vaucourt.” Her voice implied 
a compliment, flattered and caressed me. I felt sympathy 
pulsing in her emphatic hand-shake. 

“See,” she said jerking up her little brown wrist as her 
fingers still clung to mine. “See that horrid scratch, I got it 
climbing through the hedge, I have been having a look 
round.” She drew her hand out of mine and put her lips to 
the red mark on her arm, staring at her mother the while 
from under her brows, aggressively. “Father has changed 
the garden, I hardly know the place.” 

I laughed. “Your father, Mademoiselle, keeps pace 
with the age. If you want to see a sober, old-world garden, 
you must visit mine. If you ever have a role to play, full of 
ceremony and pretty sentiment, you must learn it in my 
garden in the shade of a certain cypress I know.” 

“I should like that,” she agreed with disconcerting sim- 
plicity, then suddenly she shivered. “I am cold,” she said 
plaintively and pressing her hands to her breast, began to 
cough. 

“There,” — snapped Madame Bonnet, rising in exaspera- 
tion and gathering up her embroidery, — “there, Luce, what 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


263 


did I tell you? But no, you would run half-dressed about 
the garden and without your hat. Just look at her, Mon- 
sieur, and she down last week with bronchitis. Come into 
the house this instant, Luce.” 

The girl shrugged cynically. “Isn’t Maman motherly all 
at once?” she warbled with an impudent grimace and went 
gambolling after Madame Bonnet’s unconscious hack, imi- 
tating the good lady’s majestic port, mincing and posturing 
in her wake. 

I followed, I felt dazed, quite foolishly happy and 
younger than I had for years. It was as though I had come 
suddenly on a patch of heliotrope giving out all its fragrance 
in the sun. 

When I caught up with the two ladies they were half 
across the lawn, and by that time Luce had assumed the role 
of filial piety. She had wound her arm round her mother’s 
neck and as she edged along, she wheedled, “Give a smile, 
a little smile, a pretty, teeny, weeny smile,” while tickling 
the large, yellow, maternal cheek. Her overdone ingenue airs 
struck me as so funny that I had much ado not to laugh and 
she feeling her audience, redoubled in virginal candour, in 
innocent exuberance. She played for farce and darted quick, 
bright glances at me out of the corner of her eyes like a 
squirrel. 

Before she reached the house, however, she tired of em- 
barrassing her mother. She lagged and began to cough and 
strike her frail chest and say that after all, it was not the 
body that kept her alive, but the spirit. Each time she put 
her wad of a handkerchief to her lips, Madame Bonnet cried 
out, “There !” in an aggrieved voice. 

“Mon Dieu, Madame,” said I, “since Madame Sarah 
Bernhardt set the fashion, every promising young actress has 
a cough ” 

The girl chipped in on my words, stopped the voice in 
my throat with a look — a look so sharp, so vindictive that I 
was positively startled. Her features seemed to swell with 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


©64 

venom, she shrank from ns and walked alone and her face 
took on that hybrid, mongrel look peculiar to women with 
short hair. 

In the salon, for I loitered, prolonging my visit waiting 
for Ernest, Luce — I remember I had begun to already think 
of her as Luce — sulked still. I can see her now hunched up 
in a chair, worrying at her handkerchief, her eyes blazing 
with a wanton melancholy. When her mother addressed her, 
she merely shrugged, me she answered in monosyllables. I 
began to feel I was outstaying my welcome. 

I rose to go hut just then in walked Ernest ushering two 
friends, two men with whom I believe he was engaged in 
some business transactions. His grafted smile came off at 
sight of his daughter. 

With genial irony, “You see, Papa, the five-thirty left for 
Paris without me after all,” she assured and turning to me, 
“Monsieur de Vaucourt, I want to talk to you — alone.” She 
spoke with a pretty, petulant air that allowed of no contra- 
diction. “Come,” added she and led the way to the far end 
of the room. 

I followed, disconcerted by her change of maimer. Once 
more she was metamorphosed — a spoilt celebrity now, gra- 
ciously arrogant, no longer the underbred hoyden I had just 
seen glowering over a grievance. 

A sofa was set close to the open window and here she 
chose to sit. I drew my chair opposite her. She was sil- 
. houetted against the green gloom of the garden. The scent 
of blowing foliage breathed over us both and seemed to waft 
a meaning into what she said, though her talk was prosaic 
enough. I remember she gossipped of celebrities, spoke the 
jargon of Bohemia, yet somehow all the while, I felt it was 
with the spring, with poetry itself that I communed in the 
dusk. 

Strange, I had hardly seen this girl. Had I met her in- 
advertently, I might not have recognised her, and yet she 
seemed to me somehow part of myself. These sudden physi- 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


265 


cal affinities, these irresistible attractions, this emotional 
suction as it were, is as inevitable as the fusion of one chem- 
ical with another. 

My astral self swept and circled about the sofa, hovered 
over this woman, bent down and looked in her face, burrowed 
in her hair and embraced her entirely. 

Our talk ebbed, it was as though she understood my men- 
tal possession of her. She grew silent and I felt close to her. 

I pretended to work that night, I stood late at my study 
window. The lights in the house opposite beamed on me 
with a tender radiance. 

What was there about this girl that despite her dark col- 
ouring, her small stature, her buoyant youth, reminded me of 
a woman who had swayed my life — of Marie-Therese — 
Marie-Therese as she used to be ? 

In the warm, oppressive dark, Luce’s face rose before 
me, or no, this face was not hers. I could not recall her 
features. Because of her contradictory expressions, because 
of the dim light in which I had last seen her, I could not 
picture her. No, the face I now saw was the face of pleas- 
ure, of sensual joy itself. 

The flowers on my sill gave out their scent, it was as 
sweet, as propitious a night as ever I knew. 

Which of those windows opposite starring the house front 
was hers ? 


CHAPTER XLI 


“Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned?” 

Proverbs, 

And then once more it began, the old familiar torment 
and turmoil and fatuous delusion. Again I came under the 
sway of the most fatal, the commonest force of life — passion. 
Incomparable illusion that can induce a man to sacrifice 
everything for one woman, who in reality will answer no 
better the riddle of his heart than will any other woman. 

When I was a boy, I loved a woman older than I. My 
youth humiliated me then. How it was a girl I loved — a 
child in years — now when I was no longer young. 

My worldly wisdom, my cynicism served me not at all. 
Luce made a crass idiot of me. It was her eyes misled 
me, they seemed to say, looking at me, “We understand each 
other, we are the same sort.” Even in the first week, before 
a word of sentiment had passed between us, I read sweet in- 
sinuations, promises, subtle confessions of love in Luce’s 
most casual phrase and action. Looking back now I believe 
I read a meaning where none was, I spelt out a poem where 
no poem was written and yet I was not inexperienced. I was 
rich, I was a celebrity; I had met before women who mim- 
icked a passionate affection for me; I had accepted what 
these ladies had to offer, but I had always been sceptical as 
to the sincerity of the sentiment they pretended to feel for 
me, but now how Luce fooled me, how credulous I grew! 
How that I loved, I was only too gullible, too eager to believe 
myself beloved. 

I remember one morning, a day or so after I first saw 
her, I met Luce in the street suddenly. I walked with her 
and noticed she was short of breath, panting a little. Had 

266 


A WOMAN"’ S MAN- 


267 


she hurried, or was her heart drumming like mine, choking 
her and draining her of breath ? I remember I brooded over 
this problem as though my life hung on its solution. 

Again another time — I had just paid her a visit and 
bidden her good-bye — her farewell hand-shake had seemed to 
me full of promise and as I crossed the street back to my 
house, I grasped my left hand with my right trying to judge 
how strong a pressure of the fingers constitutes a meaningful 
hand-clasp. In short, I was imbecile, drivelling, even in the 
days of calf-love I had never been so sentimental. 

Early in our acquaintance, I had asked Luce for her pho- 
tograph. She had given it to me. I had framed it and used 
like any maudlin school-boy to kiss the glass that shielded 
her face. Where my lips pressed, my breath left a mist and 
her image would smile back at me as through a cloud. What 
a fool I must have looked — I, a pedantic, middle-aged scribe 
lost to all self-respect, to all sense of humour! 

My life was attuned to an indecorous, a frantic happi- 
ness. I was particularly pleasant at home, kind with the 
boys and lenient with my wife. I am telling the world’s 
oldest story. 

Luce’s visit to Tours proved meteoric. She startled the 
town for a few days only. Before the end of the week, the 
theatre called her, she was off to rehearsal. 

She took the night train to Paris. I went to the station 
with her, Ernest came too, jubilant to be rid of his com- 
promising child. Somehow I was not sorry he had come 
along with us and that I could not now indulge in passion- 
ate protestations. Somehow it seemed to me the confession 
I had not yet made, the words I had not yet said, were stor- 
ing up strength in my heart and must ring with formidable 
force when at last I was free to speak. 

The engine shrilled and shuddered into motion. Her 
face at the window beckoned good-bye, smiled, wavered and 
was eclipsed in the night. 

I refused to drive home and found some excuse to walk 


268 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


alone. I vibrated through and through with joyous premoni- 
tion. I had asked nothing of her, she had promised me noth- 
ing; all love’s ritual was before us and yet I felt sure of 
her. 

The stars throbbed close to the house-tops and shone be- 
wilderingly, they presaged a bright to-morrow. The street- 
lamps, the passion fruits of the town, were already aglow and 
furrowed the curb with fire, with a crop of light with globes 
of terrestrial flame. 

Next morning, despite the promise of over-night, proved 
dull. Sitting at breakfast, I felt I had waked to a void, 
colourless world. Only yesterday every insensate thing had 
seemed to me alive with harmony. A market wagon creaked 
in the street, a dog barked, the grocery shutters rattled up or 
down, and I thought, “Luce hears that too.” The train gave 
its long drawn whistle and within myself I said, “Luce has 
not left Tours yet.” Through the medium of these prosaic 
sounds, I felt I communed with her. 

But now boredom took me at the throat ; there surged over 
me as never before, the ennui of the provinces, the oppres- 
sive melancholy of the town where I had worked content for 
years. This Luce who had grown from child to woman, in 
the house opposite, before my inadvertent eyes, this girl with 
whose name I had been familiar since her birth, now dom- 
inated me. 

How still the street was and how still our house, how 
suffocatingly still ! The boys — two strapping fellows by now 
— had left home for good and were working in Paris, each 
at his profession. Somehow this morning, I would not have 
complained had a holiday brought them back. I almost 
wanted to hear their buoyant tread on the stairs, their shout 
of “Mother,” the yodels of youth. Our house was sad this 
morning, sad as last year’s nest. 

It was understood that I never cared to talk at breakfast. 
Breakfast was my time for self communion. Over the coffee 


A WOMAN’S MAN 269 

and rolls I was supposed to attune my brain, but this morn- 
ing I could not think. I had not worked of late at all. 

The muffled rhythm of the clock, the servant’s cautious 
step, the discreet rattle of the china, all these guilty, crain- 
tive sounds seemed to say, “We respect your day-dreams, we 
are subdued to them, we know their tyranny,” and all at once 
I remembered the woman sitting opposite me ; she had given 
her youth, the best part of her life to waiting on art ; she 
had been its attentive, dumb and humble servant. How had 
she endured it all these years ? She was fond of friends, I 
knew, of human intercourse, of a little gaiety; she laughed 
very willingly — did she never fret and rebel against this 
grave, monastic peace? 

Across the table I looked at her. She sat motionless as 
though waiting, her head was slightly turned from me, her 
arm rested on the back of her chair, her chin in the palm of 
her hand and she leant towards the window as though she 
watched the street. 

Somehow her expression struck me as pitifully uncon- 
scious. Her face was the face of a woman who knows her- 
self unobserved and alone. I felt that her dark eyes stretched 
wide had ceased to see, she was thinking. 

The foggy morning showed kindly on her and gave her 
back the semblance of her youth. She had never lost a cer- 
tain virginal charm, something in her face, as in the Ma- 
donna’s, kept young. Seen in this temperate light, she 
looked as she used to look, almost — and yet — startled I said 
to her, “How pale you are!” 

My voice had an accusing ring and Bernardette flushed 
as though to reassure me. She knew how ferociously morbid' 
I was where ill-health was concerned, how afraid of illness, 
as afraid for others as for myself. She offered some excuse, 
admitted she was tired, talked of the strain of getting the 
boys equipped for Paris, the wear and tear of packing, and 
now they were gone, she said she felt strange somehow and 
a little sad of course, but it would pass. 


270 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


All the while I glowered at her distrustfully. Certainly 
she did not look strong — I resented the fact. Indeed, I felt 
vaguely annoyed with her, almost offended, and then and 
there I determined to go for a day or so to Paris. 

I left Tours by the afternoon train. It was dusk when I 
reached the Gare du Nord. I spent the evening at the 
Theatre des Capucins, the Cafe Concert of the moment. 

As I entered the building and took my seat, I glanced 
about me up to the tiers where fans pulsed, over the stalls 
where the men’s shirt-fronts showed white and the women’s 
shoulders a soft rose, through the boxes where behind a gilded 
trellis, the votaries of pleasure looked out, falsely discreet 
like wanton favourites in a harem, and at the sight of every 
woman who was young and dark, and whose body like a gipsy 
child’s shrugged thin and amber-coloured out of the corsage, 
my heart throbbed and I thought, “Is that she, is that Luce V 9 
and I looked again. 

I had no reason to hope to find her here, indeed, why 
should she be here, at this pleasure resort more than at an- 
other ? Besides, she rehearsed all day and was probably tired 
by night and rested at home. And yet somehow, I felt her 
to be near to me, suffusingly close. It was as though she 
spoke to me through the medium of the orchestra, called to 
me in the gay Parisian airs, communed with me in the lan- 
guage of femininity, in the frou-frou of scarves and skirts 
and in the fashionable new perfumes of the season. 

Every woman on the stage reminded me more or less 
poignantly of her. I had dined well. 

The Revue was the usual hotch-potch of idiocy strongly 
spiced, the obscene jokes and Gaelic disrespect of love 
brought home to me how pedantically romantic I was, hesi- 
tating, shilly-shallying, thinking out a delicate phrase with 
which to put to Luce what must seem to her by this time a 
prosaic proposition. After all, what did it matter whether 
this little actress fancied me or no ? I was a celebrity, I was 
a possible playwright, and on that ground could always get 


A WOMAN'S MAN 


271 


of her what I wanted. No, all considered, the world was 
not such an insufferable place. I would see her on the mor- 
row, a few more hours and I would be with her. 

On the way to Luce's house next day, I passed the Avenue 
Malesherbes. I was once familiar with this turning, it led 
to Marie-Therese — Marie-Therese, whom I had not seen for 
years, not since I gave her back the Roumistorf's poems — 
sensational successes by the way — not since I had settled in 
Tours — Marie-Therese, who had slipped out of my life and 
my thoughts and who now was wandering from spa to spa in 
search of her youth. And yet at her corner I paused, I 
looked far up the street that went her way. I could just dis- 
cern the gilt gates of the Parc Monceau shining as they used 
and for an instant I forgot the young girl to whom I was 
hurrying. 

My visit to Luce in her “bonbonniere" villa proved a 
disenchantment. I thought her setting crude, redolent of the 
taste of her present protector, a silk manufacturer. I remem- 
ber, as I laid my hat on a Dresden console, I thought with a 
spasm of jealousy, with corrosive bitterness, that from the 
Aubusson carpet to the crystal chandelier, from one rose- 
draped wall to the other, there was not a stick of gilded furni- 
ture, a bit of Sevres, a painted Cupid or a silly bow of rib- 
bon that Luce had not paid for in kind. 

As I mounted the stairs, I noticed the pretty hand-rail 
carved in true lovers' knots, and glancing at it as I passed, I 
felt the pathos of inanimate things, the pitiful triviality of 
all that women gain by such barter, earn of themselves, with 
the only sure currency they have. Poor Luce ! 

I found her in wild spirits, she was entertaining some 
theatre people — two Jews, influential men to judge from her 
manner, from the subtle smiles she gave them and the caress- 
ing, lingering, dazzling, long, long looks. 

The room was shuttered and artificially lit, a table lit- 
tered with nut-husks and gay with fruit and half-empty wine- 
glasses, bore proof that lunch was just at an end, a carousing 


272 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


meal it must have been. The air was still redolent with the 
odour of food, drugged with tobacco smoke, with the syrupy 
scent of liqueurs and the sharp, haunting perfume Luce af- 
fected. 

I kissed her hand, a hand brown and narrow as an Arab 
child’s. Anew I wondered that a little figure not much over 
five feet high should so dominate me, block my horizon, fill 
my world, circle with thin, young arms my future. 

I stayed at her side an hour or more, fearful of out- 
sitting my welcome yet unable to go. Every minute I hoped 
to see the two Jews take their leave, they outstayed me 
though, ousted me and I went away from Luce’s house galled 
and hurt. 

I had expected a different greeting, I had hoped for a 
tentative talk, an intimate hour. But no, Mademoiselle had 
her career to consider, her precious managers to interview. 
What right had I to seek her company? Her time was not 
for me. With a heart and brain full of bile, I boarded the 
train for Tours. 

I travel when possible at night; I have spent enchanted 
hours in the train by an open window. I have no preference 
for a moon or a spangled sky, for only in the thick dark the 
earth gives out its secret scent. To-night, however, I remem- 
ber the moon was full, it was spring — I was alone in my com- 
partment. I had lowered the window and the wind trailed 
by soft as a bride’s veil, the night breathed over me — a mys- 
tical night scented like a woman’s hair. Had I been young, 
I could have wept or prayed or written verses, instead, “Love 
is much like rheumatism,” I told myself, “get a case late in 
life and you’re done for.” 

“A pretty figure I must have cut,” thought I, “gaping 
there mute as a fish while she talked stage jargon, made eyes 
and bagged her big game, her two impresarios . . . why, 
I was as out of touch with her to-day as though a theatre 
curtain had been lowered between us, while in Tours only 
yesterday . . . pshaw, feminine strategy, advance and 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


273 


recoil, best waste no more thought on her. She is not for 
me, she will never love me. I have been mistaken again. 
The old story, the old delusion.” And I kept looking back 
through the warm night. 

When I reached Tours, the town was already astir, shut- 
ters clattered, milk-cans jangled, in our street a scissor- 
grinder kept calling and Ernest’s barouche grated against 
the curb while Ernest himself directing his coachman, woke 
the echoes with his staccato voice. 

Though brisk as the May morning, eager to start on his 
rounds, nevertheless at sight of me, Dr. Bonnet broke off his 
instructions and having greeted me and slipped his arm 
through mine, he led me up and down the pavement, darting 
at me the while a probing glance. 

“There is something I must tell you,” he said, “I hardly 
know how to begin,” and he stopped. 

“Yes?” I asked, could it be he guessed I coveted his 
daughter ? Could it be he meant to indulge in heroics ? Per- 
haps so, he dearly loved a scene. 

“Yes?” I repeated, and waited somewhat uneasily for 
him to speak. 

His next sentence reassured me. “It has to do with your 
wife,” he added, “with her health,” and he explained that 
yesterday towards evening, Bernardette had fainted. 

“Fainted ?” I cried severely, “I never knew her to faint 
before.” 

“Her heart is wrong.” 

“Her heart ?” I echoed more and more outraged. 

“Your valet took fright and ran across to fetch me. I 
got a bit of a scare myself — wanted to telegraph you but 
she made me understand she would not have it — signed to 
me I must not tell you. This is not her first attack, I sus- 
pect, she has plenty of nerve. You’ll find her up and about 
to-day, I don’t doubt, but keep your eyes open, don’t let her 
overtire herself.” 


274 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


Exasperated, incredulous, “Impossible, absurd,” I 
scoffed, “it can be nothing serious.” 

No, no Ernest’s croaking should not upset me. I knew 
him for a humbug. His patients were low — very low always, 
or so he said, that his cures might pass for miracles and be 
bruited abroad. He loved a sick-room scene, he gloried in a 
sensational recovery. I should be a fool to let him tease me. 
It was nonsense, all nonsense this talk of heart trouble, faintr 
ing spells and gradual invalidism. Why the word “illness” 
itself when coupled with Bernardette’s name was incongru- 
ous. Her very charm was her sweet saneness, she was as sure, 
as sound of health as of temper. 

Now I was delicate if you will. I was often ailing — she, 
never. Always she had had strength to spare, always I had 
found her strong enough for both of us. Bernardette ill! 
Ridiculous — no, no, I could count on her — she would not 
fail me. The order of my life could not be so reversed, no, 
no, such things do not happen. 

“Why,” I protested, “when I left here two days ago she 
was well — perfectly well.” 

“Ah ?” queried Ernest with what I thought an enigmatic 
inflection. 

“Exactly what is the matter?” I chipped in sharply, 
“what is it ? What causes it ? What name does it go by ?” 

“By a Latin name, though really a simple ailment enough 
— quite common. The tissues of the heart give out, the heart 
wears itself out beating. A hard life, anxiety, or excessive 
sensibility . . .” 

“Sensibility?” I shouted. “Good God, man! you talk 
as though Bernardette was a sensitive plant, a sort of aspen 
leaf. Bernardette — why she has not a nerve in her body, 
she is sweet, dense placidity itself, and as for anxiety, a hard 
life — oh, come now, Ernest, — a woman whose outlook is 
bounded by the nursery, the linen-cupboard and the church, 
has not much occasion for heart-beats, shattered heart tis- 
sues and the rest of it. Sensibility indeed, you make me 


A WOMAN’S MAN 275 

laugh with your sensibility. Why, if emotion could affect 
the heart, my heart would have ceased beating long ago.” 

Ernest swirled at me an appraising eye. “You glib 
author you,” and shifting his medicine satchel from one 
black gloved hand to the other, he went his way to his bar- 
ouche while I went mine home. 

I don’t know exactly«what change I feared to find in my 
home, but now since illness had passed my doors, I dreaded 
to take the first glimpse of the hall. I entered hastily look- 
ing about me as though I expected to see something unto- 
ward ambushed behind the familiar furniture. Yet no, the 
cosy interior was just as I had left it — comfortable with sun, 
genial with flowers, resonant with the chirping of starlings 
and the reassuring tick of the eight-day clock. Everything 
was in its place from the Saxe plates in the corner cupboard, 
to my letters, piled on the centre table, a telegram on top. 

A sop, the telegram proved, an amende honorable from 
Luca She complained of the dull afternoon spent talking to 
two stupid people — the impresarios, I fatuously concluded. 
When she wanted to listen, — oh ! so much, to some one else — 
could I guess who ? — should she see me soon ? — she hoped so. 

Blessed scrap of paper, blessed trivial words, cruel sweet 
inconsequence of woman! I was inflamed again with hope 
and desire. And straightening up, I saw Bernardette com- 
ing down the stairs. 

Why, at the first glance, she did not look ill, she seemed 
much as usual, not paler certainly, and I felt grateful to her 
for it. “She is no kill-joy,” thought I, reassured. 

Dressed for the street, she held out her gloved hand, but 
before I could take it, she drew it away and gave me instead, 
her left hand which was bare. 


CHAPTEK XLII 


“Of making many books there is no end and much study is a weari- 
ness of the flesh.” 


Ecclesiastes. 


I was by now given to long reveries, to spells of brooding. 
In my study, across the page I could not finish, a woman’s 
face flitted and vanished, breathed into form again and faded 
vaporously away. The face was Luce’s and yet it was not — 
rather it seemed, how shall I say ? — a composite vision, made 
up of all the sweetness and all the trouble love had caused me 
my life long. 

And recalling the past, love, I thought, like Proteus, takes 
many forms and with each metamorphosis grows less spir- 
itual, and I remembered how with Marie-Therese I wanted 
something better than the mere fusion of caresses. I dreamt 
of a more complete communion. Now the curiosity with 
which Luce inspired me was solely physical — not her senti- 
ments interested me but her proportions. For her mental 
phases, I cared not a jot and yet she, woman-like, believed me 
fascinated by her evolutions of mood. On the least provoca- 
tion, she penned me long epistles exposing the state of her 
soul. I am confident she had read George Sand’s letters to 
Alfred de Musset and rather hoped some day our correspond- 
ence, too, might be published. Her naive effusions, deli- 
ciously faulty in spelling, in grammar and in taste, she dated 
sentimentally three o’clock in the morning or full-moonlight, 
or after a sleepless night or at dawn. I took to skipping the 
would-be psychological, soul-affinity bits, no less than the 
interminable verses copied out conscientiously at full length. 
Nevertheless on the whole, I found Luce’s letters worth read- 
ing, if only for the non-literary pages, when she forgot pos- 
276 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


277 


terity, when she wrote of her struggles, her quarrels, her 
theatre buccaneering and indulged in the beautifully graphic 
abuse that was hers. 

Again, sometimes she held me merely by the turn of a 
phrase, usually a sentimental confidence, the confession of 
some adventure of the heart, for Luce, like all women, even 
those who know the least, wrote well of love. Her erotic ac- 
counts never failed to inflame me with jealousy, and yet I 
could not but be charmed by what these sketches revealed of 
youth, of sheer animal gaiety. 

Our intimacy was strictly platonic still, a mere spiritual 
philandering — too long drawn out for my taste, an inter- 
minable overture. I was not curious about the quality of 
this woman’s soul nor the quantity of her brains, for her 
opinions, her tastes, her conclusive experiences, the secret 
and inner workings of her identity, I cared nothing. She 
was to me sensation embodied, the acme of vibrant life, the 
circling arms and the deep bosom of pleasure. 

Yes, she was this to me and something more, perhaps, 
something desperate, something final, — my last love maybe, 
the embrace before the void. 

The middle-aged scribe, the student such as I, fossilised 
by abstract thought, risks his dignity when he loves. I was 
to know to the full the humiliation of waiting on a rowdy 
little hoyden, as impudent and vicious as ever came out of 
Bohemia. I fetched for her, I carried for her, I danced at- 
tendance on her, I stood hat in hand at her beck and call. I 
was broken in to her service. This was a bitter-sweet time 
for me, a time of self-abasement and passionate servitude. 

I got to know the Comedie Frangaise well in those days, 
my friendship with the Director gave me the freedom of the 
theatre. I grew familiar with the foyer and the Green 
Boom, with the shallow stairs that led to Luce’s dressing- 
room. On the landing where Dumas’ bust presides, I would 
pause for breath and with a look interrogate the statue as a 
younger lover might. The roysterer turned to stone, stared 


278 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


back at me, the eyeless sockets seemed to say, “What, is it 
always the same old trouble, just as in my day — always a 
woman? Come, man, what you want is conceit and a dash 
of brutality, and, who knows, perhaps it is for to-night.” 
And I remembered how much beloved for all his trumpet 
nose and fat chops, the fellow had been in his time and passed 
on. 

It was my fault, or my misfortune rather, to be so deep 
in love as to lose all sense of what was due me, all conscious- 
ness of my position, a responsible position in the world of 
letters, all self-respect. Like any lackey I loitered in the 
corridor, outside Luce’s dressing-room door. I gossipped 
with her dresser who pocketed many a gold piece of mine 
and pitifully patient, I waited my turn to be introduced into 
the close hovel where in a cloud of rice-powder, Mademoiselle 
de Lille held out to me her hand, clammy with liquid white 
and cold with stage-fright. 

The gas-jet flared above her bent head, threw a rectangu- 
lar shadow over her face, painted like a mask. Her lips 
smiled stiff with carmine, only her eyes seemed alive, they 
gleamed restless in their charcoaled sockets, they burnt with 
the decadent charm of artifice. 

All about her was the disordinate luxury and the squalor 
of the theatre, mildewed walls sweating with damp, wreaths 
and beribboned bouquets, sprays of flowers, the rarest, most 
perishable money could buy. Her gold toilet service littered 
a dirty table. Across a torn paper screen hung her sables, 
her extravagant street dress, and a white mystery of lace and 
lingerie; her stockings, like the sloughs of two snakes, 
drooped over the back of a chair and underneath the seat, 
her boots, arched at the instep, high at the heel, kept still the 
shape, the significant grace of her little feet. 

Usually some admirer — the same often — a titled clubman 
whom I learned to hate, sat in the far corner grave and cor- 
rect as though at church, sucking the handle of his cane, 
while Luce half out of the scantiest of draperies, shrugged 


A WOMAN’S MAN 279 

at him a hack of a warm almost Mongolian yellow where the 
powder-puff had not yet passed. 

Again at other times, it was in the Green Room I way- 
laid her. Submissive I waited for hours until she came, for 
every night she paid her respects to the bust of Adrienne Le- 
couvreur and asked good luck of the statue. A tradition this 
since the days of Rachel, a superstitious rite that Luce, gul- 
lible as a savage, never dared to disregard. Always she came 
and inevitably she was different. Sometimes she had the 
provoking eyes, the impudent decolletee of a soubrette, her 
tantalising gait, sometimes the sinuous languor of a Court 
lady. One night she was Carmen, another a fantastic boy, 
some tender youth of history, or again and best of all Salome, 
for thus I liked her most. The rigid and spare draperies, the 
Egyptian wig and the unholy pallor became her, suited her 
look of wild and ardent immaturity, her air of a vicious 
child. 

In her person I loved many women, or rather I wor- 
shipped in her the myriad, the almighty woman, the fem- 
inine divinity of love, of change, of ferocious inconsequence. 

It was the story of Circe over again and I was only one 
of a herd of foolish swine. The witch led me grovelling after 
her. If she turned on me, it was figuratively to kick me ; she 
mortified me often, offended my taste, my sensibility of a 
poet, jarred my susceptibilities of an ageing, finicky student. 
She was boisterous and common, crammed full of hysterical 
squeals and obscene slang, she had a vocabulary to turn a 
gendarme pale, a habit of munching a tooth-pick, a way of 
sucking arrow-root in memoriam of last night’s champagne 
that gave me nausea. 

Outside her art, she was past mistress in that, I admit, 
and beyond a certain elemental cunning, a flare for ferreting 
out the weaknesses of men and playing on their instincts, 
she was shallow, obvious, blatantly silly. When she indulged 
in baby-talk and went off into spasms of inane giggling, or 
when in the loud, excited voice of Bohemia with the exple- 


2 80 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


tives of theatre folk, their familiarity of gesture, their of- 
fensive pawing, she recounted the latest thing in jokes, a 
tit-bit spicy enough to cause a Brigadier-General to blush, I 
have winced for her, or again when I heard her whine for 
passing inadvertently under a ladder, or when I caught her 
sowing scandal, ridiculing her sister artists, abusing her 
rivals and disclosing her naked soul, her little, crabbed, fem- 
inine ego, I have gone hot with shame. 

I never idealised her. No, not even in my dizziest in- 
stants. I always knew her for what she was, a creature of 
the gutter whose mind could never be in tune with mine, a 
pretty little beast without conscience or mercy, primarily 
subject to instinct and to season just like any other female 
animal. 

Sometimes after the play, I took her to supper or else I 
joined her party, a crew of crazy revellers. I sat in their 
midst agape, out of my element, though I generally passed 
for the host, for I paid. 

Later in the small hours at the Bal Bullier, the Abbe or 
Pigot’s I saw her dance with others — I am not a dancing 
man — I watched her encircled by masculine arms, I saw her 
smile up at the virile face bent over hers. Yes, I watched, 
I fidgeted and sulked. Oh, I know I cut no heroic figure. 
1 had the humility of the lover, love’s grovelling need of self- 
revelation. 

To be sure though sometimes she tried me too far. I 
turned to go and with a smile she re-caught me with a glance 
of promise, of passionate submission, she set me dangling 
again on tenter-hooks. It was very cleverly done, very in- 
geniously indeed. 

And yet I could never be long angry with her. Despite 
her impudent depravity, there was about her something so 
appealing, so pitifully young. Her frail chest and hacking 
nough, her thin eager arms and infantile hands, endeared 
her to me. 

Her face was the face of tainted youth. She had the 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


281 


eyes of a child acrobat, the pale smile of a little girl who 
plays passionate roles in a cabaret late through the night. 

My dream was to take her from Bohemia, from the stage 
that sapped her health, to run away with her, to keep her to 
myself. I wanted to cut her adrift from her past, to plunge 
with her into the waters of Lethe and begin life over again 
together. I longed to forget, she herself must forget, the 
old liaisons, the promiscuous gallantry and venal passion. 
In the primal fire of love, we would come together and in its 
cleansing flame she should become mine. 

So I dreamt the long, long dreams of a lover, both elbows 
on my desk, my hands pressing my temples, bent over my 
incomplete work, over the hook I could not finish. 

Sometimes I turned to the window where summer in its 
zenith shone in an oblong of sun, an oblong of sky that some- 
how seemed oppressively blue, imminently near. Flecks of 
black swirled by, swallows perhaps or little tit birds, while a 
tendril of ivy teetered poignantly green. I think I never 
knew a June so pulsing with colour. Indeed, “love lends a 
precious seeing to the eye.” 

I remember I would sigh and with cramped fingers 
stretch mechanically towards the inkstand. I looked down 
and while summer panted and lime-trees rustled out their 
scent and human voices passed in the wind, I re-read what 
I had written — words, words, words, paragraph upon para- 
graph, fiction — my life’s purpose till now and its solace. 

Well, it satisfied me no longer, all this arid scribbling. 
Ink and paper and the words a pen can trace, of what use 
are these? All the letters of the alphabet, all the words of 
our language, are not worth a sigh, the pressure of a hand, 
the eloquence of drooping eyelids. A pause between two 
lovers, their mutual silence — what poem can equal it ? 

Now that I was growing old, an anaemic student, a con- 
firmed book-worm, the physical world, with its material 
pleasures and sensuous beauty, was revealed to me as never 
before. The mere joy of living came home to me. 


282 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


Like another Faust I regretted that my young manhood 
was not mine again to idle through, to waste, to dissipate and 
to enjoy. If I were only twenty again, I would put the 
happy years to a better use. I would close my desk, tear my 
pad and live. For what had it proved worth, the long time 
of concentration, of study, of strain and worry? What had 
it brought me ? Money, some sedative hours, the gold palms 
of the Academy. Well, I would resign all — -yes, the fame 
and the rest of it. I would give it for the glad, heating 
heart of ignorance and the clear eyes of youth. I would be 
a student, poor and unknown and as young as the woman I 
loved, and I would win her, I would take her as youth takes 
its own, I would make her mine, I would have of her what 
cannot be bought, what is inimitable — love. 

It was as though this tardy passion of mine, this flare 
of the senses, had devastated my imagination, burnt up my 
ambition. I no longer loved my work, I respected my art 
no more, I grudged the time, the trouble it had cost me. I 
looked at my desk with the hard eye of a stranger and one 
morning of ardent sunshine, I flung away my pad, I threw 
down a rebellious pencil, I stood up determined to absorb 
all the sweetness life could offer me still. 

I had finished mentally, my career was at an end. As 
an artist I was dead. 


CHAPTER XLIII 


“If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the 
things that belong unto thy peace. . . 


St. Luhe. 


I wrote no more. The summer flared itself out, smoul- 
dered into the sudden nights and the long rains of autumn. 
Paris reeked with the damp, the September hawkers found 
voice, and here and there at some street comer a genial 
beacon glowed, the red-hot stove of a chestnut vendor. 

The Champs Elysees showed skeleton trees bordering 
the wide roadway, the polished asphalt shone like a pond re- 
flecting meteor lights, the flash of passing motors and the 
red inflamed lamps of my car, a Mercedes, formidable and 
docile, speeding to the Comedie Frangaise. 

All along the Avenue went up the buzzing of the motors. 
They hummed the song of modernity, of happy hurry and 
adventure, of desperate business and sweet trysts — and in 
each, as it glided, as it pulsed, I glimpsed against the rich 
upholstery, among furs and crushable folds, the bloom of 
bare shoulders, the melting suavity of the flesh, soft curves, a 
feminine contour, a fugitive suggestion of loveliness recall- 
ing the woman of my thoughts. 

All night the motor broughams, the electric coupes, 
darted and purred from one brilliantly lit house to another. 
I, too, went my way from theatre to restaurant, from res- 
taurant to cabaret. I saw the night peter out and turned to 
my lodging. I had rented an apartment for myself, a bache- 
lor flat — 16, Boulevard Beausejour — I had furnished it 
after my own heart; I had supervised even to the fabric of 
the curtains, some Eastern stuff that when drawn allowed 
no sun to filter in, but suffused a pale glow vague, weird, 

283 


284 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


ecstatic like the dawn. I had given thought to everything, I 
had chosen with inspiration, with love’s prompting, meaning 
that some day Luce should come to me here. 

I now practically lived in Paris, the capital exerted a 
charm over me as never before. In the perverse, capricious 
city, I and my hooks were the fashion this season, the casual 
eye could not see how worn my talent was, how burnt out, 
how finished. In a certain set I was lionised. Success, that 
heady draught, smacked sweet, intoxicated me, gave me hack 
the arrogance of my youth, excused my grey hair, proved to 
me I had made a name for myself, that I had earned some- 
thing — notoriety of sorts, fame, perhaps, to offer the girl I 
loved. 

Love, like malaria, is intermittent and at times I remem- 
bered my household, the ties, the dear bonds of a lifetime 
and travelled home to Tours. 

As I neared my native town, the landscape framed in the 
train window, the flying vistas grew familiar. On the hori- 
zon tapered something bright like a ray, a spray of sun — the 
spire of the cathedral. The shaft grew with each instant, it 
inched down and suddenly, huddled on the sky-line, appeared 
a shadow ; the mass, conglomerate at first, took form, began to 
separate, seemed to open up, to unfurl before me in welcome 
— Tours. 

I walked from the station to my house. Friends passed 
me and called me by name — a real home-coming! And I 
realised, always with surprise, that I was happy here. I 
liked the town, it was dear to me, though somewhat sobering 
as are the places we knew as a child. 

I saw again with pleasure the facade of my house, yellow 
with sun and rain. Anew I noted the green spray overtop- 
ping my garden wall, the feathery tuft of the fir-tree, the 
dark pinnacle of the cypress. A romantic-looking door with 
a grated aperture, a postern barred as though for lovers to 
whisper through, revealed a corner of the lawn, a square of 
decorous sward and the brooding shadow of a yew, while be- 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


285 


yond in the open stood the dial, a commemorative pillar to 
the sunny hours cloistered here. 

Sometimes I saw my wife come through the garden, from 
a distance she looked a young woman still. She stretched 
out her hands and smiled as youth does, but she moved more 
slowly, her train rustled among the autumn leaves while her 
cloak hung without a quiver for these days were without 
breeze, I remember, uncannily still. Quietude and peace 
were in the straight folds of her dress. Something sacred 
and healing, an Elysian sweetness seemed to move with her 
and, at a turning of the path, we met. 

In our first silence, I heard the pit-pat of the falling 
leaves, the rustling of a sparrow, for there were birds in the 
garden still, and such flowers as weather the cold late into 
the year. 

She was in black, I remember — in mourning for her 
parents, they had died lately. 

I would have kissed her, but she unconsciously or of a 
purpose, prompted by love’s insight, its holy pride, which 
bears no compromise, endures no pity, lowered her head 
and my lips touched only her hair, — hair soft as a child’s, but 
here and there quite grey. 

We walked together slowly towards our house. I asked 
after her health, for I thought her pale, disquietingly so. 
I remembered my last interview with Ernest, his portentous 
shakes of the head, his pompous gloom. I questioned her 
anxiously and she answered as I meant she should — she com- 
forted and reassured me. 

Her soothing presence, her sweet saneness, her under- 
standing and unfailing sympathy, revived my egoism, my 
cruel, naive selfishness, and I was tempted to confide to her 
the obsession, the torment that kept me from her, to tell her 
of my love for Luce, to ask her, “Isn’t it terrible, isn’t it 
sad, what insensate fatality when I could be so content in 
the lull of middle-age, here in this house with you.” 

Instead I invented a story for her benefit, an excuse to 


286 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


account for my absence from home. I cannot recall exactly 
what I told her, hut I talked a great deal, complained of the 
exigencies of literature, wove some ingenious yarn and I do 
not remember that she ever interrupted me. She made no 
comment, asked no question, neither expressed belief nor dis- 
belief. She listened passive, perfunctorily attentive, a little 
aloof perhaps — I had almost said proud — as though my dis- 
play of fancy, my intricate lying did not touch her. Rather 
she seemed preoccupied by some problem, some sudden rid- 
dle forming like a cloud on the horizon of her life. She ap- 
peared to look forward beyond the present, to keep her eyes 
wide with anxiety, dark with yearning, fixed on the future. 
It was as though she foresaw some event imminent and grave 
whose advent must cause a radical change in our lives. 

Somehow she altered in these days, she spoke with me 
as never before, she talked of my books, she told me of her 
belief in my work’s lasting quality, of her faith in the im- 
mortality of all that is sincere and heartfelt, and in the same 
breath she would remind me to wear my muffler or impress 
upon me, as though for all time, some other trivial, prosaic 
thing, one of those things women count important. 

For the first time, she discussed my publishers with me. 
She informed me of practical affairs, of my income, my roy- 
alties — she kept track of these mercantile details, so odious 
to me. She tried to make me understand the lay of her 
own property — she was no fool in money matters. She 
strove to wake me, old dreamer that I was, out of irresponsi- 
bility. She prompted me wfith an unerring flare in the 
choice of my acquaintance — this and that fellow was not to 
be trusted, but such and such a man was my friend. 

She spoke often of her boys. Jacques, she said, was very 
clever, he loved me dearly, too, I must never forget that, but 
possibly Lucien was the more dependable, the best to turn to 
in case of emergency — he was the oldest. And once, I re- 
member, she added she wished we had had a daughter — a 
daughter was perhaps dearer to her father than his sons 


A WOMAN’S MAN 287 

could ever be — kept closer to him as he grew older. A 
strange note rang in her voice, a chord final and minor. 

And ultimately towards the close of the year, in the early 
encroaching night when the blinds were drawn, the lamps 
lit, the fire crackling, she confided in me, told me her inmost 
thought. She wanted, she said, to adopt a child — a girl, and 
looking towards the hearth she ceased to speak. 

The vacillating fame suffused her face. Intermittently 
she seemed to blush as though she saw happiness glowing 
among the embers. 

In the pause that ensued, I heard the wind sigh down 
the street, shake the shutters, creak through our house with 
an almost human tread. Instinctively I turned towards the 
door, but she, without glancing up, repeated what she had 
just said. Yes, she wanted to. adopt a child — a girl, and I 
understood she regretted that her boys had outgrown her care 
and I acquiesced in her wish. 

The Foundling Home — that nest of charity, that hive of 
childhood, is nevertheless to look at, as forbidding a building 
as any in Tours. The windows are barred as though to keep 
youth prisoner, the door has a chain and big bolts and a gap- 
ing dark slit in the centre like the aperture of a monster 
letter-box. This is the ever-open maw that swallows the brats 
of poverty and shame. Their mothers resign them here to 
big-bosomed charity who herds them together in their black 
pinafores, portions out food and gives them a name and a 
trade. 

The Home is of bile-coloured stone and I remember how 
livid the facade loomed as, through a December drizzle, I ap- 
proached with my wife. From a niche over the lintel a 
plaster virgin blessed us. We passed under her rose-shod 
feet, entered, and on the instant an odour poignant and 
cloying oppressed me, a composite reek — mildew and in- 
cense blended with the twang of cabbage and the insipid 
after-whiff of melting wax. On the left, through a baize 
door, sounded the muffled pulsing of an organ, on the right 


288 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


the lay sisters clattered in the refectory, and all down the 
corridor, resonant as a tunnel, my steps rang covering the 
echo of my wife’s light tread as together we followed the 
matron to the girls’ ward. 

In the schoolroom — a vast hall monotonous with white- 
wash, chequered with crude-coloured maps — by the door, I 
hesitated, while childhood, file upon file of it, turned on me 
its wide, unwinking gaze, the pouting inquiry of its mouth, 
its unabashed scrutiny. 

The chill light showed row upon row of sleek young 
heads, correctly glossy and severely uniform. No curls, no 
wilful locks of hair blowing any which way. The charm 
of the feminine child was here subdued, suppressed, and 
looking from one anaemic face into the next, I wondered 
which of these pale little girls Bernardette would choose to 
adopt, which of these puny children would come into her 
own — into her queendom, into the power and tyranny of 
womanhood, grow and mature in our old house. 

Slowly, hesitating often, my wife passed between the 
forms. Now and then before some desk, she paused, glanced 
back at me, then went on and as she moved away, children 
gaped after her, with a smile, adoringly. Something of an 
ordeal this, thought I, this business of adopting a daughter 
and in sudden self-conscious panic I backed into the hall, 
there — marvelling at woman’s sentimentality, at her depend- 
ence on affection, her need of something to mother — I waited 
till Bernardette should make her choice. 

A soft, scurrying sound, the whisper of a woman’s skirt, 
and I turned to see my wife moving towards me through the 
dim vestibule. She came impetuously, with the rustle and 
rush of her cloak, and I thought — why, I don’t know — of the 
angel of the Annunciation, of the angel of glad tidings. 

In the street, leaning on my arm, looking in my face, she 
told me her news. Certain formalities were still to be gone 
through with, authorities were yet to be interviewed, con- 
tracts signed, certificates obtained, but in six months’ time, 


A WOMAN’S MAN 1289 

in less perhaps, the child would be ours and free to come to 
us. 

She spoke eagerly, in over-joyed earnest. She laughed 
and a slight hesitation kept recurring in her speech, a catch 
of her breath as it were, a sort of throb as though the beating 
of her heart gave her utterance rhythm. I felt her shaken 
by incomprehensible happiness. 

I was mystified. What elemental impulse, thought I, 
what blind premonition drives her to adopt a girl child, to 
let a stranger into our house, what womanish insight guides 
her choice, what deep homing instinct? 

Anew I wondered at her and holding the umbrella over 
us both, found nothing to say to her. 


CHAPTER XLIV 


“Hast thou a wife after thy mind? 
thyself unto a light woman.” 


Forsake her not; but give not 
Ecclesiasticus. 


“Let her not go; keep her; for she is thy life." 

Proverbs . 


This year, some time in June, occurred the crash in my 
fortune, my financial smash up. Colbert and partner, my 
publishers, failed. Marie-Therese, I suspect, was the undo- 
ing of the firm. Her distempered brain, her wild schemes, 
her extravagant freaks, her drug-fed hopes, her morphia 
optimism, seemed to have infected all her business asso- 
ciates. A whirlwind of speculation, of poor judgment, of 
mad mistakes, swept over the publishing house and laid it 
low. Marie-Therese whipped off to Italy with the best of 
the spoil, and there pointed out as might be the scarlet one 
of the Apocalypse, whispered after like some unholy thing, 
ridiculed for her wigs and her persistent passions, she 
passes, a crew of decadent boys in her wake, out of my story. 

Her failure put an end to my income. Unless I set to 
work anew, I must be dependent on Bemardette and against 
this thought I rebelled. I could not live on my wife, my 
honour would not hear of it. A queer thing, my code, it 
allowed me to accept all a woman had to give, to take every- 
thing she counted precious, but not her money. 

My ruin was as a trumpet call, a clarion blast daring me 
to buckle on my harness, to spring, veteran though I was, 
back into the arena and wrestle once more among the liter- 
ary lions. Fate challenged me to prove whether or no I 
had written myself out. 

Well, no, I was not equal to my destiny. My weapons 
290 


A WOMAN'S MAN 


291 


were grown blunt, my youth was over. Imagination, hope 
were lost, the drunken strength of ignorance was gone out 
of me. What sort of a fight could I put up now — now that 
I was sober with regret, heavy with disillusionment, sick at 
heart and old ? 

To work once more, to write again, I needed a new heart, 
throbbing with enthusiasm, pulsing with inspiration, the 
heart we lose at twenty. To recatch its rhythm, its glad 
beating, I must rest on some young breast. 

The collaborator I craved was youth, was Luce. I needed 
her not only as my mistress, but as my mate, as the partner of 
my home. Were she housed with me I might yet become a 
poet worth the name — a lord of song — and breaking with 
the past, strike free of convention, of routine, forsake my 
old home, give up my family, leave my wife and begin life 
as might a boy. 

I remember I was in Paris, in my apartment, in what I 
called my study; I was alone when I read the news of my 
publisher's failure. I swayed forward, I recollect, I leant 
my elbows on what served me for a desk, a console where I 
wrote to Luce and for a while I sat motionless, quite still, 
my hands pressing my grey temples, clasping my head that 
had done so much thinking in its time, so much glad day- 
dreaming. 

The record of another hour, the clock's sweet inconse- 
quent chime roused me. I looked up and saw the room as 
luxurious, intimate as love’s prompting had furnished it, 
saw the cosy niches, the deep divan, the flowers, the glass and 
silver toys, all the dainty frivolity my dreams of Luce had in- 
spired. 

“Ah," I thought, “if one day she should come to me here 
as a woman comes home to the man of her choice, to the 
sweet intimacy of her husband's house! If she were mine, 
not for a passionate hour merely, but mine to shelter, feed, 
clothe, if she lived with me, if my work might keep her, why 
then, I could write once more." 1 


292 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


And I pictured our life together. Mutual interests, a 
joint happiness, between us the bond of work in common, 
the freemasonry of art. Even the stage should not hold her 
from me, for since she loved the theatre, since acting was in 
her blood, I would make the drama my study, the curtain 
should not divide us, we would meet on the same side of the 
footlights, be clapped or hissed together — I would write a 
play for her. 

And I imagined what my life might have been. Luce 
would have come home to me here nightly after the theatre. 
I saw it all. The table would be spread for supper, her place 
ready laid opposite mine and while I waited for her, the 
ticking of the clock, the murmur of the traffic would rock me 
in the sure expectancy of her coming, lull me till I heard 
behind me her step, till I heard her skirt whispering over 
the carpet, till I felt her drawing me back, pressing my head 
against her soft breast where sounded her heart, till I saw 
her face bending over mine drawing deliriously nearer as 
she leant to me within the radius of my lamp, leant against 
me out of the shadow, out of the propitious midnight. 

Just to think of it, nightly she might have come to me 
here in the still, deep hours! But no, no, I should never 
again feel youth’s lips, love’s touch, all transfusing happi- 
ness. 

And yet, after all, why not ? Why not realise my dream 1 
Why not induce Luce to live with me here ? In winning her, 
I should not be asking her to share poverty with me. Col- 
bert’s failure had left me something, some royalties already 
paid, a sum sufficient to tide over the year, to keep Luce in 
luxury for at least a twelvemonth, and after that — pshaw, 
what with love to inspire me, with Luce to help me, I was 
not afraid of the future. I should be rich soon again, richer 
than before, more successful than ever. 

But how get Luce away from the man with whom she 
now lived? — a Viennese banker the fellow was, fabulously 
generous, miraculously wealthy. How make her disgorge so 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


293 


much money and come to me ? Did she love me enough to 
leave her Croesus, did she love me at all ? There was a ques- 
tion I could not answer, the problem no lover can really 
solve. 

No, I could not pretend to read Luce’s heart. It was a 
sealed book to me writ in feminine hieroglyphs, but I had, or 
I believed I had, a certain insight into her character. I 
knew her to be ferociously ambitious, voracious for fame. 
Success I knew was the one god she respected. I knew, the 
store she set by notoriety, the lengths she went only to be 
talked of; her eccentricities, her intrigues served to keep 
her name in print. She eloped with one man, jilted another, 
often she changed her lovers for the purpose of advertise- 
ment merely, the boom of scandal. Publicity, that was what 
she wanted. Well, I had something to suggest, a fine adver- 
tisement. I was a personage still, the papers kept in touch 
with me and once I was known to have left my wife, once it 
got about that Luce had broken up my home, that I was 
living with her, tongues would wag beyond a doubt. What, 
think of it, Armand de Vaucourt, that middle-age scribe, 
staid President of the Authors’ Society, model of all the 
virtues heretofore, oh, implacable Venus! What a tit-bit for 
a press-agent ; scandal enough to fill a printed column ! My 
affairs were worth some space to the press, I could promise a 
certain publicity to whosoever associated herself with me. I 
would tell Luce so, cynically I would ask her her price, how 
many head-lines, how big a type did she cost ? 

Seriously though, every woman is for sale. If money 
will not buy her, another coin will. Pre-eminence, social 
or artistic, has its market value with women, so has a name. 
A name! — why I had a name to offer, it was worth some- 
thing. Luce might choose to trade with me for it. Did she 
care to be called Madame Armand de Vaucourt? Did she 
fancy the name ? If so, I would make her my wife and Ber- 
nardette, bigoted Catholic though she was, should be forced 
to divorce ma 


294 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


I decided to go that very evening to Tours. I must talk 
with my wife, I must find out from her exactly how I stood 
financially. Bernardette understood anything practical far 
better than I did. 

I left Paris by the night train and when I reached Tours, 
early morning though it was, I found Bernardette already 
astir. Through the hushed house she came to greet me, the 
shutters were not yet open, we met in a sort of twilight, the 
day was beginning outside, but in here brooded the peace 
of a sweet summer’s night; rest, sleep, still held the house 
under a spell. 

The chirping of the birds, the street-calls, the market’s 
matutinal clatter sounded incongruous to me here as I talked 
with my wife in what seemed the dusk. 

How becalmed was this old house, what balsamic heal- 
ing was in these walls, what hallowed influence drowsed 
here — the charm of inanimate familiar things of the kind 
household gods that had known me grow up from a boy. 
Here, peering out of the grate were the dolphin-headed fire- 
irons that kept watch over the hearth. On the mantel, the 
row of Dresden people smiled as debonair as ever. From 
over there, where the bird-cage hung in the window, over the 
flower-hoxes, sounded a sleepy twitter now and then, while 
from the landing the clock communing with itself filled the 
hall with a muffled ticking, with a reverberation soft and 
steady as the heating of a heart. Peace! Why, I felt it 
pulsing here to the drowsy sway of the pendulum. 

I noticed a bowl of roses on the mantel, another on the 
window-sill, and suddenly I knew the summer was more 
advanced than I had realised. Certainly we were in June — 
and I explained to my wife that during the last month I had 
been too busy to write, something unforeseen had kept me 
in Paris, but I had known all was well with her, her letters 
had reassured me, especially the letter in which she told me 
that the boys were coming home for a holiday. 

To get in touch with her again, I asked after her sons. 


295 


A WOMAN’S MAH 

Were they with her still, or had they gone back to Paris, to 
their work ? And suddenly, as though in answer to my ques- 
tion, I heard their voices deeper, more masculine than I re- 
membered. I heard whistling and humming on the floor 
overhead, long drawn-out yawns and laughter; all the exu- 
berance of youth waking. 

Some one threw open the window that gave on the land- 
ing and the upper treads of the staircase were suffused with 
sun, but down here in the hall, it was still dark. 

My wife and I spoke low together. I leant against the 
baluster, she stood a step or so above and behind her the 
stairs stretched up into the light. The sun motes rained in 
through the window, drifted across the landing and, like a 
golden dust, blew over Bernardette’s head. A nimbus of 
light, a halo formed about her. To look at her now pow- 
dered with sun, you would not believe her hair was growing 
grey. Her face was in shadow, silhouetted against the fur- 
ther wall where the sun streamed. You could not see her 
face, but because of her voice, you might have thought her 
young. 

Her arms were swathed in close, conventual-looking 
sleeves, her clasped hands rested on the baluster near mine, 
and as she leant towards me, a faint fragrance emanated 
from her. Her dress rustled, its folds breathed out sweet- 
ness — iris, violet, what was the perfume ? . . . even now 
sometimes in mid-country, or in a garden, or during my soli- 
tary walks, when spring is in the air, I recognise that scent. 
I do not know its name and I never knew any other woman to 
use it but Bernardette. 

We talked of my publisher’s failure for a while and then, 
I remember, she told me that Lucien had been promoted in 
his business. I congratulated her. I recollect, I asked her 
for news, news of Tours, of herself, of some mutual friends 
of whom I had lost track. From habit I questioned her as 
though her interests were still mine, she answered me simply, 
she seemed unconscious of the fact that we were grown 


296 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


estranged of late, that our lives had nothing in common — and 
listening to her, I felt as though the past, as though my own 
lost youth, was whispering with me here, leaning towards 
me in the form of a woman. 

I listened with pleasure, attentive to this voice. A sense 
of well-being suffused me, a sense of content. I was vaguely 
happy, satisfied. It was strange, and yet why strange? 
After all, this was the wife of my youth, of my young man- 
hood, we had weathered the difficult years of middle-age to- 
gether. Could it he I was thinking of leaving her ? 

Well, well, was it my fault if I had outgrown this woman, 
if she had nothing more to give me? Was it my fault if 
gaiety, passion, what only a young woman has to give is the 
author’s stimulus? The poet’s Muse is a girl in her teens, 
in her first almighty youth. In Luce I recognised the very 
genius of youth, so then was I wrong to covet her, to deter- 
mine at all costs, to secure hereto make her mine? Was I 
guilty in this? Was I to blame?' Could I help it? Assur- 
edly no. As well ask — could I prevent having been born an 
artist ? 

No — frankly no. I felt no remorse at the thought of 
breaking with my wife, at the prospect of having done with 
her and all she impersonated — home, the past. Pshaw ! Why, 
for me the past was in ashes. The hope of a new love, a new 
life fired me, revived me as the flame renews the phoenix. 

I followed my wife up the stairs. She moved slowly, 
leaning against the baluster. On the landing she paused, she 
pressed her hand to her side, her eyelids, no whiter than the 
rest of her face, drooped ; she lowered her head and the full 
glare of the sun revealed her in her neat, dark dress, panting 
a little. 

“You lead too sedentary a life,” I complained and scru- 
tinised her with an irritated curiosity not untinged with 
alarm. 

She avoided my eyes, averting her face from me. She 
turned, she opened the door that gave on the landing. 


A WOMAN’S MAN- 


297 


In the oblong of light I saw a child’s bed, a big dappled 
rocking-horse. All along the wall, bright lithographs — the 
success of Jack the Giant-killer or the Yellow Dwarf’s ad- 
ventures gazetted around the wainscot. I saw a tower of 
bricks — I saw more playthings. The room was flooded with 
sun, it looked much as it used to look when it was the boys’ 
nursery, one innovation though, I noted a toy-house and be- 
yond — why, what was that propped up on a footstool ? — that 
thing, bewigged and bland, smiling with the ineffable con- 
ceit of an idol, its stiff arms outstretched in an heraldic at- 
titude of welcome ! A doll — here ? 

What was a doll doing here? For a moment I was puz- 
zled, just for an instant till — why yes, to be sure — of course, 
thought I, remembering the little girl my wife hoped to 
adopt — the foundling from the Orphanage. 

Well, where was the poor brat — still at the home or here ? 
and I questioned Bernardette. 

She told me she expected the little girl Thursday of that 
week — three days from then, and leaning against the door- 
frame, looking into the room, she talked of the child while 
gradually the colour crept back into her face. 

What day-dreams I heard then, what hopes she confided 
in me, what faith in the future she unconsciously professed, 
what a tenacious trust in happiness! I listened to her and 
I wondered. How had she stayed so young, how had she 
kept so new a heart — this middle-aged woman ? And just to 
think of it — why I had reproached myself almost for being 
about to forsake her — as though with her nature, with her 
illusions, she would not always be happy ! 

Perhaps what had momentarily troubled me to-day when 
I first saw her, touched me a little when on the landing she 
had turned to me, was her pallor, the precipitate rise and 
fall of her breast, the fluttering of the poor, pinched nostrils, 
but no — there was nothing in all this — Ernest might talk as 
he would, these were as much the signs of anaemia as of 
mortal illness. Her heart indeed ! And why should her heart 


298 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


give out, I ask you? What did Bernardette know of life’s 
stress that breaks the heart, prematurely wears it out beat- 
ing? No, no, placid as she was, she would last the normal 
span, the three score years and ten to their full. 

Here in this quiet house, sheltered and at peace, she 
would grow old, content, with her adopted child. She would 
outlive us all — me at any rate, and since she seemed to find 
life tenable, I was glad for her sake. God knows I wished 
her nothing but good. 


CHAPTER XLY 


“Or ever the silver cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken. . . ” 

Ecclesiastes. 

“You must . . .” I said in love’s halting voice, “you 
must come away with me — I want you, I can’t go on like 
this, I can’t go on living without you — Luce, Luce!” And 
I strained her to me, I burrowed my head in her breast, I 
sank down drawing my face along her body. Huddled at 
her feet, I sat pressing my forehead against her knees while 
she, hobbled by my arms, stood rigid, condescending as an 
idol, conscious of her superior youth and her almighty sex. 

Why, why is not passion contagious ? And what a mon- 
strous thing it is that when two lovers meet, one can feel so 
much and the other so little. 

Still, she had shown herself amenable. She had agreed 
to come away with me, she had agreed to join her life to 
mine. My pleading to-day had found her ready, indulgent 
and resigned. In” ed to love’s traffick, she had answered 
“Yes.” 

It was in her father’s house I won her, the day of my 
arrival home, for by some coincidence, she too had come on 
a flying visit to her people. She reached Tours the same 
morning I did, hut by a later train. 

It was her habit to hear down unannounced on her par- 
ents, rout them out of bed, scare them from their food, break 
up the complacent tenor of their lives. Like some unlaid 
ghost from rowdy Bohemia, she materialised, with horrid 
suddenness, unrepentant and very noisy, startling Ernest, 
making him tremble for his practice, his good name, his 
laborious respectability. In vain did he blast her with anath- 

299 


300 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


emas and the parental curse — she would visit him; her 
laugh heralded her, the street rang with her far-carrying 
chatter, her piercing gaiety ; indeed it was the sound of her 
young voice that on the morning of my home-coming drew 
me to my study window. 

As once before, I watched her leap on to the curb, clear 
the house-steps in a bound, vanish in the gloom of the porch 
and long after her father’s door closed behind her, I stood 
on at my window dreaming the sweet impossible dreams of 
a poet or a very young man, enjoying the sun, permeated by 
summer, feeling all in tune just as when for the first time I 
saw her. 

What was it I said to her later in the afternoon, how was 
it I got her to answer me yes — made her promise to meet me 
that very evening at the station and wing with me by the 
night train to Paris, to my apartment, to soaring happiness 
and a joint flight through life ? 

Did I speak to her of fame, of money — how did I bribe 
her? I only remember telling her that I loved her, repeat- 
ing love’s hackneyed litany with its reiterations and its 
breathless pauses. 

I remember she was standing by Ernest’s desk, I had 
followed her into his study, his medical bookshelf was her 
goal. Like other women of her class, she gloated over descrip- 
tions of disease; the realistic illustrations, with now and 
then a Latin phrase to mystify, exerted a fascination over 
her. 

To-day I found her ransacking the library, the door was 
shut and we were alone. A thick folio lay between us and 
it was across a coloured chart that I began to plead with her. 
I prayed to her among the contending odours of iEsculapius 
and under the cold, shallow eyes of a phrenological bust. 

I remember her bold smile of consent, contradicted by the 
widening of her pupils, the sudden look in her eyes of in- 
stinctive recoil, look of surmise and vague anxiety, pitiful 
look, peculiar to every woman when, for the first time, she 


A WOMAN’S MAN 301 

listens to her next lover, to the exigencies of a new and so- 
called love. 

I remember, as I left her, the tugging sense of joy at my 
heart. I should see her to-night, after to-night she was mine, 
she had given me her word. This was my crowning instant 
and the other big moments of my life when I had thought 
well, written the truth, brought to completion my fancies, 
seemed to me nothing — dry as the plucked leaves that make 
the laurel wreath. 

The close of the day was sultry. Streamers of a tropical 
yellow streaked the West. From where I sat near the win- 
dow, pretending to read while waiting for the evening to 
drag through, waiting for the hour of escape, I could see my 
garden banking up with shadows, blue, purple and indigo. 
Not a leaf stirred and every branch was taut, mesmerised 
by the coming storm. The uncanny repose of the trees, the 
imperturbable foliage fixed as though under a spell, sug- 
gested something seen by enchantment, in a vision, some- 
thing a man might glimpse in retrospect looking back on 
life . . . Looking back on life, well, that was what I was 
doing now. I should not see this garden again. No, nor the 
house, nor this room with its sedate charm, its faint flavour 
of lavender and happy reminiscence. I was agoing out far 
away into the world of Bohemia. I was breaking free of all 
this, I was faring out to feel the fullness of life, its white 
heat, its meridional splendour, and my heart was pumping 
agonisingly fast like that of a boy on the threshold of adr 
venture on the eve of love. 

It was somewhere between six o’clock and seven and all 
about me went on the domestic sounds, the discreet activity 
that foretells the evening meal. I heard the well-pulley 
droning comfortably in the garden. I heard the servant lei- 
surely laying the supper-table, and through the open door giv- 
ing into the dining-room I could just see the side-board gay 
with fruit and flowers, merry with silverware and starred by 
the bright flame of the sizzling coffee-urn. 


302 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


The scent peculiar to our old home, odour of dry herbs 
and chintz, straw and lavender permeated the air more and 
more, growing in homely sweetness with the dusk. The 
wood-work, the china-cupboard and the wine-cooler, the staid 
chairs began to exchange masonic creakings anticipating 
their long gossip through the night. In the encroaching 
dark distinctly I heard the ticking of the eight-day clock, 
temperate pulse of the house, and once I heard my wife’s 
voice and I knew it would not he entirely easy to go away 
definitely never to return. There was much to keep me here 
— memory, habit . . . and I was surprised at what I 

felt, for, no, there was no mistaking the feeling; I felt sad. 
It was as though all unknown to me, my heart had cast an- 
chor here. 

“You understand,” I said across the supper table, 
“Bernardette !” and I leant towards her, I moved a candle to 
see her face. “You understand — or no, perhaps you can’t.” 
And I flicked away my napkin, I kicked back my chair, 
pacing the room, I lectured on the artist. I called him half 
monster and half sick child. I told of his cravings, his over- 
mastering needs, his terrible temptations stronger surely than 
the ordinary man’s. I said that as a plant wants sun, the 
artist must have youth to draw him out, gaiety renews him, 
so does the pretty, inconsequent laugh of the teens and early 
twenties, the sweet, perishable beauty of a young face. Oh, 
the charm of rosy cheeks and health! And I would pause 
for breath, for effect, and tossing back my head, draw my 
hand through my hair — a gesture affected in my boyhood 
but by now grown natural to me. 

I talked rather loud to-night and not so fluently as a 
man usually does on his favourite subject. My monologue 
halted, it ceased at moments and in the quiet house, my out- 
bursts of voice died away unanswered. Nothing like arguing 
with the echoes to sap a man’s eloquence. 

I sat down by my wife and taking her hand — she drew it 
gently away from me later to keep on with her work — I 


A WOMAN’S MAN 303 

talked to her in Household proverbs, in a simpler language 
more like her own. 

I told her there are certain people who can never he in 
sympathy, certain natures that can never fuse together, just 
as certain chemicals never can. They must always be sep- 
arate, apart. She would understand me, I said, when I re- 
minded her that oil and water will not mix . . . and I 
hesitated, almost fearing she had guessed my meaning, fear- 
ing it and yet hoping it that I might translate her silence as 
acquiescence, as her mute acquittal of me, her consent to 
my going. 

I told her, the author’s gift is given him in trust, a taleni 
in the biblical sense to increase two and three-fold, not to 
bury. I told her a man owes it to himself, to his develop- 
ment to seek the company — well, the companion who inspires 
him. 

It was my way of preparing her, it was as much of a con- 
fession as I had the heart to make. It was as near as I 
could bring myself to telling her that I meant to leave her 
for ever to-night. 

I do not know how much of this hinting and sophistry 
she understood. She was sewing, her body inclined towards 
the lamp. The light suffused her face and the bosom of her 
dress which was of soft smoke-coloured stuff — grey, like a 
dove. Her hands — I often wondered at her having no artis- 
tic talent — she had a musician’s hands — went through a 
rhythmic gesture, always the same, and with each stitch, one 
of her wrists worked out a little beyond her cuff and then 
was hidden as she drew hack her arm. 

It soothed me to watch her, without exaggeration, it en- 
chanted me ... I cannot tell why . . . no, I can find 
no words to express the charm some women convey into the 
prosaic business of drawing a needle and cotton through a 
bit of stuff. 

I took up her work-basket and as I talked, I turned it 
about in my hands — the skeins of silk felt soft to the touch. 


304 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


In the lid ranged in rows were all the implements, pretty as 
toys, that make up the accoutrement of sewing — scissors in 
semblance of a crane whose long beak served to clip the 
thread, a strawberry in which needles were sticking and a 
quaint plaything made out of wax and shaped like a heart 
whose use I did not know. 

I fell into a reverie, I forgot to go on talking, charmed 
by these foolish trifles so essentially feminine. 

Everything that pertains intimately to a woman has 
always fascinated me. From the combs, amber or tortoise- 
shell, that hold up her hair, to the fans, that alter with the 
fashion and pulse through an evening, to the long gloves 
that mould her arms and keep after her hands are withdrawn, 
the shape, the fragrance — one might almost imagine the 
warmth of her fingers. Yes, the very tools of the sex that 
has caused me such trouble and that I have battled against 
more or less my life long, are dear to me. Why, the mere 
sight of the feminine weapons used in the warfare of love, 
handkerchief and scarf, veil and embroidery-frame are 
enough to disarm me. 

I looked long, insistently at Bernardette, willing her to 
raise her impassive eyelids, glance up from her work into 
my face and see there my regret at leaving all she imper- 
sonated, read there the excuses I had no voice to make, the 
decisive farewell I could not speak, my irretrievable good- 
bye. 

You see, for years, it had been my habit to consult her, 
to discuss my plans with her — not that I asked her advice, 
or especially wanted her opinion — no, it was her attention, 
the listening of sympathy I craved. I talked to her of my 
affairs somewhat as one talks aloud to oneself and even now, 
to-night, incongruous as it may seem, I longed to have her 
understand, forgive, approve, my thus turning off into the 
by-way of illicit love. 

Apparently her work absorbed her, she drew nearer the 
lamp, she leant away from me, her head averted. She bent 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


305 


over the table, mirrored in the polished mahogany I saw her 
face. The image though blurred, vague as a reflection in 
troubled w T ater, was like her and something sweet and fami- 
liar wavered in this phantom face, in this ghostly replica 
with its white, broad brow and two soft mystical hollows in 
place of the wide, dark eyes I knew. 

I had said all I could say, I was silent. Somehow I felt 
more at peace, perhaps because the atmospheric tension was 
over, the storm had passed. During our meal, it had rained 
heavily, the soil was surfeited, and through the open window 
the dark garden permeated us with the gratifying stench of 
mould, of saturated grass and leaves. Now and then in the 
deep, grateful hush, a drop from an overcharged branch 
splashed down, fell quick, sudden, irrepressible, like a great 
unstaunchable tear. 

My train was due soon. I went to my bedroom, I wanted 
to look over my things, sort them, take away what I needed, 
but as I turned up the lamp, as the familiar setting to sweet 
nights, to comfortable sleep, flickered into sight, a dejection 
that was fathomless, an infinite fatigue submerged me and 
I sank on the bed and sat with my head bent, my hands dan- 
gling across my knees, staring down between my feet at the 
floor. Here in the fragrant quiet of this room, in its sacred 
atmosphere of order, I could feel the woman I had just left 
close to me. Her presence seemed even nearer, more vital, 
than a moment ago downstairs when she breathed alive at my 
side. 

The sharp closing of the house-door roused me — a visitor 
at this hour ! Oh no, of course the postman, the last deliv- 
ery — suppose Luce had written me, suppose she had gone 
back on her word — suppose she meant to fail me — not to meet 
me at the station to-night ! Good God ! And I hurried down, 
— but no, for me nothing. 

The only letter was for my wife. As I came towards 
her, she was reading it. It was news of her adopted child, 
I knew. I knew it from her face as she looked up at me. 


306 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


“Well ?” I asked momentarily forgetting I meant to take 
no part in this sentimental experience, had no interest in it, 
would never see it. “Well, when will she be here?” 

In answer, my wife still looking up at me, handed me 
her letter. Somehow she reminded me as she turned her face 
up to mine of an early photograph I had of her — the one I 
liked best, the one taken shortly after our marriage. 

The matron wrote the little girl would be discharged 
from the Orphanage on Thursday of that week, three days 
from then. 

“All’s well that ends well,” I said pleasantly, “you will 
have a companion now,” and I turned to her to give her back 
her letter. 

She was looking up at me still with those dark and in- 
comparable eyes, and the hand I had stretched out to her 
hesitated and fell at my side. I, too, looked gravely back at 
her and I forgot what more it was I had meant to say. 

She was standing by now and she laid her hands on my 
shoulders. She was wishing me good-night as she supposed, 
but I knew it was good-bye. 

Incomparable eyes — yes, that is the word. This woman 
had incomparable eyes, “very mirrors of the soul,” to quote 
a hackneyed line. Now somehow, her gaze bewildered, daz- 
zled me and I hurried through what I had to say. “You 
know,” I explained, “I’m going up to town to-night, but I 
will write you from there.” 

I had decided it would be best to send her from Paris a 
careful composition, a chef-d’oeuvre of farewell. My cor- 
respondence was something of an art. I would write her I 
had not found it easy by any means to leave her. Above all 
— and I would underscore this — she must not reproach her- 
self, she was not to blame if we were uncongenial. And I 
would add that I was still fond of her after my fashion. 

“Well, I must be going,” I said and I laughed rather 
foolishly. 

The fact was I could no longer face her. The look in 


A WOMAN’S MAN 307 

her eyes was so poignant, so what we call human, when we see 
it in a dog’s eyes. 

“Well, good-bye, Bernardette, good-bye, my dear,” and I 
bent over her to kiss her, but somehow gradually, impercept- 
ibly, she had drawn away from me, she was holding me at 
arm’s length. 

“Good-bye,” she answered, “good-bye, Armand,” and 
she passed her hands over my face very gently, just as the 
blind do when they want to remember some one. 

As I stepped into the street, as I hurried to the station, 
the warm summer night breathed over me. In soft, voluptu- 
ous gusts, it sighed in through the open windows of the com- 
partment where Luce and I together, alone, scudded across 
the moon-flooded country, by express, towards Paris. 

Opposite us on the rack, her valise trembled with the 
trepidation of the train while against me her shoulder 
brushed, her arm stroked mine as she raised her hand and 
lifted her veil, for she had met me to-night with a veil over 
her face. She had come to me as the Arabs say his future 
comes to a man, with face hidden like a bride. 


CHAPTER XL VI 


“ An d immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been. scales.” 

St. John. 

Well, we were off, we were free. Life was beginning for 
me over again. I must remember this, I must glory in the 
thought. 

The shade had slipped down over the electric globe; the 
green baize softened the crude, lucid light starring the cen- 
tre of the ceiling. Luce had taken off her hat, she was laugh- 
ing. 

I cannot endure a dialogue with a woman when it begins 
in the major key, with titters, mutual chaff and personal 
gibes, to effect the change to the minor, the deep, tense and 
passionate is so difficult I have always tried to keep up with 
the times, to be modem and realistic, but I think at heart I 
must be a sentimentalist^ a hanger-on of the old romantic 
school, for I can never attack the subject of love with a prac- 
tical directness. Ho, I must make use of circumlocution, of 
flowery speeches, while all the while in my heart is a sweet 
melancholy. 

I feel sure that now my exquisite choice of words, my 
hesitant delicacy, was quite lost on Luce. Indeed there was 
something about this little actress, a sort of animal frivolity 
that discouraged any sentimental eloquence, any lyrical out- 
bursts, in fact the sincere expression of any deep feeling. 

I have learnt since that the only man who ever really 
touched her heart was a certain low comedian, a cabotin, 
from I think the Vaudeville. I was not surprised to hear it 
His mind had infected her. She liked to be courted in the 
gay, ribald vein. She wanted to be made love to as the clown 
308 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


309 


makes love to Columbine, but I do not understand love grin- 
ning through a horse-collar. 

The engine gave its wild, piercing whistle, the train jos- 
tled over a crossing, the lamp-shade slipped lower, the light 
was eclipsed, the window-blind jerked and I saw the rolling 
fields, the open country scouring backwards. A farm-house, 
a copse, sweet wooded nooks preparing for midsummer, all 
scudding out of sight, vanishing. Between each telegraph- 
pole, a pretty, rural picture passed away in a soft, luminous 
mist as though drenched in moonlight. 

I was holding Luce against me, my arm passed over her 
shoulder and we both trembled with the spasmodic, ever- 
accelerating rhythm of the train. 

At last' I had caught her ! What a race she had led me — 
mischievous and elusive being, very sprite of youth, — but I 
had her now and I held her close. She was mine to bear off 
to the corners of the earth. We could leave Paris, she and I, 
we could travel together — Spain, enchanted Italy, the azure- 
isle of Greece were ready to harbour our love. 

The train jolted her against me familiarly, her hair 
pressed on my cheek gave out an intimate and, to me, new 
fragrance. Every woman brings to her lover something un- 
foreseen, some surprise of the senses, and even through her 
innocence he learns. Here is the cause of the ever-recurrent 
mirage in a man’s life, the secret of the heart’s passionate 
phantasmagoria. By devious by-ways, we stumble suddenly 
upon love and it seems always new, strange, never by us ex- 
perienced before. 

Ineffable sweetness of this rare, summer night! Volup- 
tuous joy, acute langour of the moment! More poignantly 
than ever then I realised, but, no, realised is not the word, 
since it implies a certain conscious effort of the brain, I felt 
through every fibre that the world has only one happiness to 
give us — the other lures it offers us — knowledge, success, 
great honours — what are these bribes ? Dead Sea fruit. The 
best thing, the only real thing is to hold in your arms a 


310 A WOMAN’S MAN 

young, adored creature consenting to love — all the rest of 
life is a lie. 

“Little Luce,” I said, “little girl, the wisest man of his 
time, the prophet of wisdom, a certain King Solomon it was 
who wrote the world’s prize love poem, a disenchanted stu- 
dent this old author, a man given to saying, ‘all is vanity,’ 
and yet he wrote the ‘Song of Songs.’ 

But I saw she did not follow me, could not patch together 
my process of thought. She was ever an alien to me men- 
tally, besides it would have needed love’s intuition to know 
all I meant and, wanting to hear her voice, I questioned her 
about herself. 

She told me of a season she had spent in Moscow. She 
had played at the best theatre there and been made much of. 
A great nobleman had loved her, he had thrown her a ring 
on to the stage, right to her feet, it had rolled into the 
footlights. It was an emerald — luck’s stone, they say. She 
declared he had loved her, this Russian, with a romantic 
fervour such as we know nothing of in the West, or so she 
said, seasoned by the brutalities of a savage. She went into 
rhapsodies over this Muscovite and I thought, given the cir- 
cumstances, her enthusiasm in poor taste. But then she 
never had any tact, surely if she had understood the potency 
of words, the vital pictures they draw, in the brain of an 
imaginative man, she could not have confided to me the in- 
delicate anecdote with which she crowned her Russian expe- 
riences. 

It seems that the icy air of Moscow inspired her with a 
voracious appetite, the Eastern food is fascinating. Had 
nature permitted it, she could have eaten twenty suppers, but 
thanks to the country’s sweet vodka, to the Russian cham- 
pagne with its cloying flavour, its nauseous sugariness, one 
need but prod one’s finger down one’s throat, to recover one’s 
appetite and in the Roman fashion begin one’s banquet over 
again. 

A growling shudder and the train stopped. I looked out 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


311 


to see the dome of a station arching over us. The place was 
Orleans, where for a quarter of an hour we were booked to 
wait. I wanted to sit still and watch her face by the light 
of this unfamiliar town, hut Luce grew restless, fidgeted, 
questioned the guard and finally decided she was hungry. 
She hung out of the window and yodelled desperately. A 
vendor of oranges and flasks of brandy, of sandwiches and 
madeleines rolled up his truck for her inspection. Stretched 
over the sill, she launched out on an intimate confab. She 
discussed the price of his wares, abused his goods and co- 
quetted with them. “Give me that one,” she would cry 
pointing, “there, to the right— no, further to the left — now 
you’ve got your hand on it. No, no, the one next it — 
there!” And when finally he handed her the orange she 
would flair it, punch it, make a grimace, toss it hack to him 
and the whole business began over again. She would ogle 
another orange. 

I had had occasion before to note her fantastic caprices 
and fanatical excitement when shopping — what I called her 
“counter-whimsies.” I was fond of giving her trinkets, hits 
of jewellery to make her think of me, and once when I had 
offered her a new type of necklace she coveted, she kept me 
cooped up in a shop in the Rue de la Paix an entire afternoon 
while she made her choice. The priceless and variegated 
stones had vied with each other to dazzle her, they had 
slipped through her fingers like the essence of the rainbow 
while she swayed over the plush-padded counter hypnotised 
by the clinking, venal music of the gold and platinum chains 
— but now, really for an orange! 

“Come, cherie,” I hazarded, “decide — let the man go, 
people are calling him.” 

She drew in her touseled head and butted at me like an 
offended faun. I did not understand her, she said. 

I went cold. I felt I had made a mistake. The look she 
had given me I can only describe as poisonous — there was 


312 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


venom in it and positive hatred. In a majestic huff, she 
threw herself back in a corner of the railway-carriage. 

I was distraught. I offered to buy the lot of oranges. 
She thanked me but informed me I had taken away her ap- 
petite, and thereupon she shut her curly, full and sensual 
lips tight in a mutinous and tragic fashion as though she had 
decided to let herself starve to death. 

Imagine my feelings ! Poor, pretty little beast, what a 
tyrant she was! Well, I bought her a lap full of oranges 
and she threw them all out of the window, full in the back 
of the retiring huckster. 

Then suddenly she had a change of mood, another ca- 
price. The fellow sold quaint, wicker covered bottles of 
brandy. She wanted one. 

I shouted to him, I bellowed till he came. She chose with 
intense concentration and infinite precautions, her flask. To 
my eyes it looked just like the others, but she held it against 
her frail, immature-seeming bosom as though it were a talis- 
man — she sniffed, she had smelt the brandy, she remembered 
the odour made her sick. “Oh, take the horrid mess back and 
return the money” — and, after all, she would try a sandwich. 

The man fished in his pocket making a wry face. I told 
him to keep the franc or so, whereupon Luce clasped me in 
her electrical young arms, warbling I was a silly, generous 
old thing, which did not prevent her loving me. 

Over my shoulder she caught sight of a vendor of cush- 
ions, footstools, all manner of phantasies for luxurious trav- 
ellers. She forgot to give me the kiss, her pretty lips were 
formulating. She threw herself at the window and signalled 
wildly. Then there was a to-do! This footstool? No, that 
one! That pillow then? No, the other! How lovely she 
looked framed in the window, her hair blowing every which 
way! To me she was beautiful, but no one else seemed to 
notice her. 

Finally she padded a cosy, cushioned niche for herself 
and snuggled down with a deep sigh of content. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


313 


The train was hurtling' on again through the night. The 
electric light spied down on. us now for Luce had asked me 
to lift the shade, it sagged somewhat still, it drooped like an 
ironical eyelid. Luce was brushing some crumbs out of her 
lap, she was in high spirits after her sandwich. Elemental 
creature that she was, a few mouthfuls of food set her off 
chattering and giggling, her heart heat close to her stomach. 

I offered her a cigarette. I wanted her to get rid of the 
toothpick — it offended me to see her biting it. She accepted 
and began to smoke. Her eyes half closed nestling among 
her pillows. Her sensuous little person snuggling after com- 
fort, settling down to repose. 

She told me in a purring voice of the jolly life we would 
lead together — balls and suppers and suppers and balls, 
gaiety and then gaiety and always gaiety — always on the 
round, always on the go. I quote her slang, her argot of 
Montmartre. 

“And when am I to work ?” 1 hazarded, but she had only 
one refrain, “Well, I like gaiety, you see I am young.” 

“Chums,” boon-companions, were to be ours, many, many, 
a chorus of them. They would cheer us up by visiting us 
more or less perpetually, we would play practical jokes on 
them, that was the beauty of having friends. Besides, we 
would protect talent and be charitable and kind. We would 
adopt starving, misunderstood, handsome young musicians 
and actors and above all, I was never, never to be jealous, — 
ours would be halcyon days. She and I would do some real 
living and when I mildly pointed out, — amused in spite of 
myself by her chatter that if we were to live at all, I must 
make enough money to keep us alive and if I was to make 
money, I must work and if I was to work, I must have some 
peace, a little quiet — I assured her my house was kept very 
silent for me at home — all the answer I got was — “Gaiety, I 
want it, why won’t you remember I am young ?” 

Only one thing I said appeared to make any impression 
on her, one remark of mine, however, undeniably startled 


314 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


her. On the strength of her surprise, she darted a look at 
me, she questioned me sharply. The significantly canine 
character of her face, her resemblance to a pretty little mon- 
grel fawning, but quick to bite, was accentuated as she lis- 
tened. 

“So Colbert’s failure ruined you, did it? You’ve lost 
everything? — well, you’ve only just enough left to scrape 
along on?” 

I assured her, in all sincerity, that nothing is easier than 
for a man of my literary standing to make a fortune a year, 
but she did not look reassured. Could it be she suspected 
my ability, the selling quality of my work ? 

Ah, well, she might not know what miracles passion may 
work in a man. This love adventure of ours, this escapade 
of hers and mine would do me a world of good, activate my 
brain, stimulate my imagination, shake me out of the old 
humdrum rut of routine. If she threw in her lot with mine, 
she need not be afraid of our future. With her at my side, 
I would write masterpieces, coin money. 

To-night I was realising my dream. To-night I was elop- 
ing with romance, poetry, with the very spirit of youth im- 
personated by this girl at my side. All this beauty, mysteri- 
ous to me as yet, was shut off with me here, alone, travelling 
with me through the summer night. 

I drew her to me. I held her against me. I kissed her 
forehead, her eyes with their quivering, tickling lashes. I 
kissed her smooth cheeks and her warm throat where the 
artery beats. I kissed her mouth. As we grow older we find 
there is for us only one life-giving source, only one spring 
where a man may drink the waters of youth. 

The night breathed round us, sighed through the open 
window, blew over us. Her hair fluttered on her temples, 
it stirred against my face, and when I released her, her long, 
heavy-lidded eyes shone on me through their lashes. All the 
fiery languor of youth swam in her great, black, magical 
pupils. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


315 


She put her cigarette — it was ringed at the tip, I noticed, 
with red, stained by her carmine-tinted lips — back into her 
mouth. Her hand fluttered up, forward, backward and 
down as she smoked, her supple, brown fingers, her bright 
pink nails, seemed to call for a wrist ringed with jade, with 
coral and tinkling silver — the hangled wrist of the East. 

She seemed all feline grace now as she lay indolently 
pouting smoke-rings up towards the ceiling and softly sum- 
ming up her thoughts. “Of course,” she said, “it isn’t as 
though you were dependent on your work, there’s your wife, 
she’ll leave you everything . . . and anyhow she can’t 

last long,” — just like an after-thought, the girl had added, 
“she can’t last long.” 

My face as I turned to Luce must have frightened her 
for she paled and stammered. “Why, don’t you know ?” 

“Know — know what?” 

“Why . . . but of course you know it. She’s dying, 
didn’t Eather tell you? She asked him not to, but I sup- 
posed — well, it’s her heart, you see — it’s done for, all worn 
to pieces. She suffers from, I forget what Father calls it, 
but anyhow she can’t live out the year. She might die any 
time, at any moment the end might come. Why do you stare 
at me so ? I made sure you knew — must have known. You’ve 
only to see her. She looks so white, I’ve noticed it lately, — 
just dragging herself along by her will. So Father never 
gave you a hint ? Ah, well, I see how it is, she told him you 
couldn’t bear to hear* about anything sad, illness and that 
sort of thing — lots of authors are like that. Why do you 
glare at me, Armand? I’m sorry, mind you. I’ve never 
met any one quite like her. She has such a — I don’t know 
what to call it, such a kind — but no, that’s not the word — 
such a good, that’s not it either — such a giving look out of her 
eyes, and the same manners for everybody.” 

Dying — Bernardette was dying. My veriest acquaint- 
ance knew it. A stranger to her had told me the news. The 
human heart — how pitiful it is — complex, contradictory, 


316 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


self -ignorant ! What man dare say he knows himself, that 
the workings of his soul are plain to him, that neither the 
upheaval of his instincts nor of his memory can surprise him ? 
Here was I ready, as I believed, to break with the past, to 
break with my home, with my children, and with my wife. 
Eager, or so I supposed, to be done with the old tie of do- 
mesticity, and yet, at the first hint of an irrevocable and su- 
preme good-bye such as only death itself can impose, my 
whole being rose in revolt, rose in arms, at the thought of 
leaving Bernardette, — at the prospect of irremediably losing 
her, forsaking my life’s partner and mate, my brave and 
touching comrade. 

To leave her in triumphant health, to fancy her reading 
news of me and of my increasing fame, to picture her willing 
to accept me back, ready to admit me home, for always I had 
had a premonition I might perhaps drift round to her again. 
Yes, to picture her waiting at home for me, that was one 
thing, but to think of her as already paling before the ad- 
vance of death, separated from me eternal iy, irretrievably 
was another and a very different question. 

Something stirred at my side. I looked round. Luce 
was snuggling to rest, stretching and yawning, writhing after 
comfort. An instant later, I caught her in my arms as she 
drooped towards me asleep. 


CHAPTER XLYII 


"All good things together came to me with her ” 

The Wisdom of Solomon. 

She slept with her head on my shoulder. She rested 
against me and I quite forgot her. I was thinking of a 
different woman, of some one I had known when I was young, 
of some one who had weathered the years with me, gone out 
with me into the wild surf of life, been buffeted with me by 
the rise and fall of the waves of circumstance, ridden with 
me upon the crest of success and sunk down with me into the 
trough of anguish and despair, into that swirling pit where 
a man flounders and smothers and reaches out for a hand to 
save him. 

I was thinking of a woman no longer young and whose 
beauty the world might judge was gone. Gone with her 
bright colour and the easy smiles of youth. I was thinking 
of a woman . . . the woman who had loved me and given 
herself to me in the true sense of the phrase — spent, bled 
herself for me — I was thinking of my wife. 

I was like a man born blind, impervious to light, with 
eyelids sealed whose sight is suddenly opened and who, 
looking about him, cries out, "What, is the world so?” I 
was quickened with surprise and holy awe, the scales had 
fallen from my eyes. 

I looked back, as far back as my boyhood, and I saw 
along the stretch of the years, over the long road I had come 
way to the far end of the track. So that was I, was it ? That 
boy dreaming of the future, of work to be done, of the un- 
known travail of creation, dreaming at the open window, 
watching the swallows skim over the opposite roofs. He 
dreams too much perhaps, that boy, but his mind as well as 

317 


318 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


his body is growing, feeding on the scents and sounds of 
earth. He inhales the stimulating odour of the snow, or the 
heady gusts of spring, and the chiming of church-hells and 
the rumbling of the market-carts, sing to him. His brain, 
his heart, the artist in him is ripening to fruition, let him 
he, let him dream a little longer, he will not find the time 
later in life. But a woman’s voice is always calling him. 
She is calling him to Church, to meals, to school, to the 
treadmill of diurnal duty. She is good and inexorable, he is 
subject to her — she is his mother. She keeps him to herself, 
she is jealous in her love. He leads a lonely life, he is es- 
tranged from his kind. 

The first child that comes his way, he looks at with wild, 
hard eyes, the child is a little girl and he stares at her with a 
shy and cruel curiosity — later, she is his wife. 

He grows up, this boy, he goes through the phases and 
the melancholy of the maturing body and when her hour 
strikes — Woman in all her carnal beauty, in all her animal 
force, meets him and holds him in her embrace. She vivifies 
him with her kiss and leaves him dizzied and at a loss after 
her lips have left his. She happened to he a woman of the 
theatre called Marianne. He desired her for what she re- 
vealed to him, he was subject to her for a time, hut she went 
away — out of his life. She had taken no root in him and he 
forgot her. 

Then began for him an era of peace and harmony. He 
knew the studious sweet hours of creation, the vital instant 
when an idea is conceived, the joy of art’s conception. He 
wrote a book, hits of it he read aloud to a young girl who 
was later his wife. He walked with her arm in his. His 
heart heat against her shoulder. Already they were en- 
gaged. He listened to the sound of his own voice, quoting 
his own composition and feeling that she, too, was listening 
with all her vitality, he spoke the better, corrected a phrase, 
chose a juster adjective, a simile more true, perfected his 


A WOMAN’S MAN 319 

thought, simplified always, and once his work was com- 
pleted, he needed her no more. 

The time had come for him to know the migratory im- 
pulse ; he wanted to he gone, to shake free from the shackles 
of childhood ; he wanted to see the capital, the sinful, beau- 
tiful, crimson Gomorrah, and he got leave and went to Paris. 

There he met a woman potent in his life. She was 
versed in the lore of what he called love. Her beauty al- 
ready then was on the wane, but the autumnal splendour 
of her scarlet, flaring prime glowed about her still. Her 
notoriety, the rumour of her vices, dazzled him. When he 
was with her, his lack of experience, his ignorance of life 
weighed on him like a crime. He was ashamed before her, 
but she, to give him confidence, assumed a soft voice, coaxing 
smiles, a wheedling, dissolving look. She treated him as 
though he were a grown man with a sweet womanish sub- 
servience, and though she was haggard with the use of drugs, 
the abuse of love and the wear of time, her false gentleness 
fascinated him as might the wiles of the Evil One itself. 
She absorbed him utterly and he put his life into her keep- 
ing. 

Then little by little she took from him all that once was 
his, all he ever had had worth the taking. She took the 
faith of his youth from him, his high ideal of art, she 
clipped the wings of his spirit, she sapped him body and soul 
and fired him with unwholesome fires, with an unholy and 
consuming flame. For her sake he strove after popularity 
rather than self-expression ; for her sake he wrote for money — 
and to write more grossly, more in the popular vein, more as 
Mammon dictates, he drank. 

He lost his birthright for her sake — his home, yes and 
all the ties that bound him there and insistently kept tugging 
at this heart, he broke. He lost touch of his mother and of 
the young girl who once figured in his life and used shyly to 
peep in and out of his thoughts as he grew up. Mother and 
fiancee — he forgot them both. 


320 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


The girl was the first to feel his estrangement. She sent 
him a ring, the ring he had given her when they were first 
engaged. He kept it — what else could he do hut accept it 
with formal excuses ? He was in the throes then of his pasr 
sion, going through the fiery furnace, over the live coals 
where every artist must pass. 

Incendiary jealousy, scorching desire, all the hot flames 
of youth, all our hereditary fires had flared up about him; 
Into the hands of this Marie-Therese, he surrendered his 
soul, for her he betrayed a woman who had helped him, he 
stole his friend’s work when his friend was dead. He quoted 
the Princess Poumistorf’s poems as his own hoping thus to 
hold the attention of his mistress a little longer ; to distract, 
amuse her, he gave her his honour, his life he was about to 
give, hut when he stretched out his hand to make an end of 
himself, to take up a weapon, he touched a hit of cardboard, 
a photograph. 

A young girl’s picture came between him and death — the 
likeness of the girl who was to he his wife, saved him. Her 
face recalled much to him. He thought — he hesitated, and 
the man who makes ready to die and then hesitates, is no sui- 
cide. 

Something persuasive spoke to him while he studied her 
picture. He looked at this face and something called to him 
— an echo, a memory. It called very faintly yet loud enough 
to draw him home to Tours — to her. He found her prettier 
than he remembered, he suspected he could again make her 
his. Her unconscious and touching ways betrayed her mute, 
deep love for him. 

He felt rather lonely — his mother had just died. He 
was idle and curious. He won the girl with phrases he knew 
pat, glib rhapsodies, rehearsed effects. He made use of his 
smouldering passion for Marie-Therese, of the tactics and 
eloquence it had taught him. 

The game proved easy. Flattered, a trifle supercilious, 
he took this child to wife and such is our human grossness of 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


321 


perception, that without knowing it he was happy, how 
happy he never guessed till now, looking back through time, 
through the perspective of the years. 

“You are my mother and my venerated father, my dear 
lover and my young husband” — so in the Iliad sings the 
bride as she comes to her lord and sinks down at his feet in 
love’s proud humility. She is a little breathless, afraid and 
very glad. Come, lift her up, you lucky man, hold her by 
her white wrist where the pulse never throbbed but for you. 
See her eyes are shining on you with virginal tenderness, her 
lips are trembling and shaping a smile, and as through a 
cloud, see her face turned up to yours under the soft folds 
of her veil. 

It was all this, you blessed mortal, that went at your side 
from the church to your home. Your own heart never beat 
more harmoniously, in more perfect concord with your blood 
than did the heart against which your arm pressed on your 
wedding day. What have you done with the heart that so 
faithfully kept the rhythm of yours? 

You never valued it, did you? It was only flesh and 
blood bound to you by the ties of law and church. You 
! accepted all this tenderness for granted. It was yours “to 
have and to hold” — all this love was to you merely some- 
! thing you could make use of as a shield, something that 
I could serve to ward off from yourself the sharp, poignant 
shafts of reality, the poisoned spears of the critics, the capri- 
cious blows of the ungrateful public, all the accumulative, 
piercing bitterness of the years. It was only the source from 
which welled all that was real and best in your work. It 
was only the human strength of one poor mortal given up to 
you. It was only the prop and mainstay of your being, it 
was only love offered you — love like a mortal wound not to 
be staunched. 

“You see,” said I to myself, dreaming as the train trav- 
elled through the night and my last love slept on my breast 
and I forgot her. “You see, you fine author,” said I. 


322 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


“through all your life you have been nothing but what 
these women who chanced to come your way have made of 
you. Your mother reared you in the guise of a diffident, 
conscience-stricken prig; your first mistress turned you into 
a materialist. The passion of your youth — your Maries 
Therese, set you burning — senses and brain — with a devas- 
tating fire that smouldered in you for years and consumed 
you even in the arms of your young wife. Have you for- 
gotten how, some years after your marriage, being then in the 
throes of a mute, uncreative spell, you determined at last 
to publish the Roumistorf’s poems, calling them yours \ You 
started to consummate the theft, the manuscript in your 
pocket, but just as you were leaving the house, you overheard 
your wife talking to her children, telling them a fairy story. 
You stopped to listen, and in answer to her voice, you felt 
something stir in your heart and knew you would write 
again, so you restituted what was not yours, you gave back 
what you had stolen. Once more she saved you — that pro- 
vincial little bourgeoise of no account, for the second time 
she came to your help — came to you in your need. She stood 
between you and crime as once before, she had interposed her- 
self between you and death.” 

The young girl in my arms stirred. Her head slipped 
against my shoulder, startled she gave a little groan, and 
opened her eyes wide on me. She stared an instant, then 
smiled, then dropped into unconsciousness. Cautiously I 
tried to shift her body for slight though she was, her dead 
weight pressing against my breast, cramped me. With hold- 
ing her up, my arms were quite stiff, but her head had fallen 
back at an awkward angle. All her throat was exposed nude 
and pale out of her blouse of filmy blue stuff — out of a sort 
of gauze, tremulous with her breathing. Without waking 
her, I could not move so submitted to pillowing her as best I 
might. 

The train rocked us together. Her hair, the nape of her 
neck nibbed against my sleeve, and it took an effort on my 


A WOMAN’S MAN 323 

part to prevent her temple from bumping against the angle 
of the seat. 

Something provocative, something pagan showed in the 
curves of her body, in the surging of her breast; youth ap- 
pealed in her face pale with sleep, in the white sweep of her 
eyelids, in the smile of her full mouth that pouted close to 
mine. Trying to hold her comfortably, I bent over her as 
might a solicitous lover and yet it was not of her I was think- 
ing. 

I was thinking of another woman, of some one I had never 
opined beautiful nor clever, nor in any way important to my 
happiness, nor responsible for my success. I was thinking 
of a quiet little woman given to effaced colours such as grey, 
to lavender-scented scarves and old-fashioned shawls, soft to 
the touch — of some one I had judged insignificant, mediocre, 
a typical house-wife till now. And yet somehow now, I 
kept thinking of the gaze of her wide, dark eyes looking up 
to me ; kept recalling the sound of her voice when it deepened 
as she spoke my name; remembering the clasp of her cool, 
mesmeric hands. 

Much she had given me, so much, everything. I owed 
her my success. Yes, it was all made clear to me now. 
A strange phenomenon I had witnessed in my time. I had 
known a woman of no especial brains — no, nor beauty, — by 
the sheer force of her love infuse a man with genius, make 
him eternally her debtor. A life-time of service could not 
repay what I owed Bernardette. Thanks to her, Colbert had 
accepted my first novel ; to her was due the book which made 
me famous, my book crowned by the Academy — the story so 
simple, so soul-searching that she unconsciously dictated to 
me, the time I overheard her telling her fancies to her chil- 
dren. The simple folk, they who speak as the heart prompts, 
they speak real stanzas such as inspire the poet. Every- 
thing worth while that I have jotted down — idea of mine 
that held the public, poem of mine that rang true, before I 
worked it out, I heard it said first in my wife’s voice. Every 


324 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


sincere word I have written I owe to Bernardette, hut for 
her, “my soul had almost dwelt in silence.” 

Her life was a perpetual service, a perpetual devotion. 
It was her love kept house for me, made my old home 
so comfortable, worked a charm into the prosaic routine 
of domesticity ... we grew older, both of us, and when 
I passed her on the stairs, I thought how pale she is — she is 
ageing. And just to seem friendly, I asked her for news of 
her sons. I thought, you see, it was my wife who had gone 
by, brushing me slightly with the fringe of her shawl, when, 
as a matter of fact, it was love with all its magnetic, vivifying, 
sacred force that had passed by me. It was — I can find no 
other but the old hackneyed word — my guardian angel who 
had met me and looked me in the face. 

Strange it had needed the voice of my last love to reveal 
this to me. It had needed the voice of this little actress, her 
head resting for a moment on my breast, to make me realise 
that in forsaking my home like this, breaking with the past, 
I was leaving the woman I loved . . . 

Loved? Well no, perhaps. I have no right to use that 
word. “Love” is a word I have misapplied, put to base pur- 
poses — a word I have degraded and it may be I have forgot 
its meaning. Rather let me say, I now realised I was leav- 
ing the woman on whom I relied for happiness, for success, 
for the sheer courage and endurance life requires, the woman 
on whom I abjectly depended. 

By now it was dawn ; the windows showed like two opal- 
escent squares warming to a topaz glow. I could see Luce’s 
face distinctly now. She was awake, looking up at me. The 
pathos of sleep, its innocence and bewilderment still brooded 
in her eyes, weighed down her eyelids, drugged her gaze. 
How should I tell her I had learnt, even while she slept in my 
arms, that she was nothing to me, the veriest stranger ? How 
should I tell her that memory, instinct, every fibre of my 
being, called me away from her, called me home ? How should 


A WOMAN’S MAN 325 

I tell her I must leave her, did not love her — how could I 
tell her this? 

She, it was — she herself, who helped me. She voiced my 
qualms, my sudden anguish. She told me where my heart 
was. 

She had drawn away from me and was smiling at me a 
little mockingly, her dishevelled head nestling in the far 
angle of the seat. She told me my thoughts were in Tours, 
and my conscience was pricking me; and I listened to her 
with my head down. She told me I was in love— just as a 
good bourgeois should he — in love with my first love, the 
love of my youth, my only love, and whether I travelled for 
business or whether I eloped, my heart stayed at home by my 
own hearthstone ; and she laughed, but in quite a kindly way. 
She was a very human creature, quick to give vent to gig- 
gling or tears, impulsive and warm-hearted after her fash- 
ion. Now, for some unaccountable, feminine reason, she 
seemed in sympathy with me — I was thinking of my wife 
now, she wagered, this very minute. Come, confess, she 
teazed, had she guessed right ?' And I admitted she had. 

I admitted what she had told me of Bernardette’s illness, 
the news of its mortal character had shaken me to the soul, 
shown me how much and whom it was I loved, proved to me 
that all unknown to me, my heart had cast anchor. I could 
feel it now pulling, tugging, drawing me home. I said I 
felt we must part and gradually the girl’s quizzical, impu- 
dent smile died away. She looked back at me gravely, it was 
though she too heard a voice calling, calling, above the rum- 
ble of steel wheels, above the roar of the train. She could 
not know that voice, but I — I knew it. I vibrated to it. It 
was the voice of my youth, of my young manhood, the cry of 
my own generation, the sweet, sweet call of the past. 

The suburbs of Paris were closing round us, the palisades 
of advertisement and the smoke. St. Lazare’s dome was 
over us as we stepped out on to the platform. The roar 
of the station, pulsing of engines, rattle of trucks, drowned 


326 A WOMAN’S MAN 

our good-bye. Without explanation, with no excuses, we 
parted. 

Some ghostly mandate had divided us. We were not 
meant for each other, yet never had we been better, no, nor 
such friends. We shook hands, she looked me in the face. 
I kissed her on the forehead and she blushed — she actually 
blushed — discomforted perhaps by my kiss. It might have 
been the kiss of a brother, evidently it was a kiss she did not 
know. 

She picked up her valise. I signalled a porter and paid 
him to carry her bag. She went away and was swallowed up 
in the crowd. 

I was studying the time-table posted on the wall and had 
just deciphered the next train to Tours when I heard my 
name called. “De Vaucourt, de Vaucourt,” came the shout 
always nearer, and I waylaid the telegraph boy as he was 
rushing by me. It was not the first telegram I had stopped 
in this station on this very spot, and yet my heart throbbed 
and laboured as I tore the envelope open. 

“Come home. Matter of life and death. Mother wants 
you to come. Lucien” . . . read the blue slip. She had 
never sent for me before, indeed never asked anything of 
me — this was unlike her. . . . 

My first emotion was one of acute irritation. I was in- 
censed with my son. Fool of a boy ! Why could he not be 
more explicit ? But, even as I fumed, I knew what it was 
had come between Luce and me, what awful and icy presence 
had interposed itself between us and spread its dark wings 
to keep us apart. It was none other than the veiled angel, 
with torch inverted, the pale, the terrible angel who knows 
no reprieve and no pity, the angel deaf to prayer. 


CHAPTEK XLVIII 


“And her spirit came again.” 

St. Luke. 

My sons sat opposite me, they drove with their backs to 
the horses and sometimes the jolting of the carriage threw 
us together. We were following a hearse, and the route 
through Paris, from St. Lazare station to the cemetery of 
Pere la Chaise, is not smooth. There are cobble-stones to 
pass over and when we three lurched one against another, 
we looked each other in the face like men who have been 
through some awful struggle together, like three outcasts 
wrecked alone together. 

And now for the first time, how shall I say it? I felt 
my children’s hands, grown hands by now, pluck at my 
heart. Eor the first time, I felt ring through me, the rack- 
ing, the wonderful chords of paternity. For the first time, 
I felt it in me to love these two strange young men. 

I loved them for their brave grief, for their beardless 
chins sternly set against the easy tears of adolescence. I 
loved them for their likeness to her, for their grave, dark 
eyes, so quick to mirror the soul, just as hers were. I always 
said they had their mother’s eyes. But what above all 
unnerved me, unmanned me, made me want when I was 
alone and had thought it all over, to go down on my irrever- 
ent knees, so stiff to prayer, so unused to kneeling, what filled 
me with wonder and abject shame, was the fact that these 
young men did not seem to think my grief mawkish, maud- 
lin, grotesquely irrelevant in me. No, they looked at me, 
in a kind way, as at a friend and I knew this was due to her, 
to their mother. She had taught her boys to believe in me, 
she had built up some pious myth about my name and, thanks 

327 


328 A WOMAN’S MAN 

to her, my sons respected me still — in spite of everything, 
they loved me. 

Oh, that long Calvary through Paris! The blinds of 
our carriage were lowered, but sometimes I had a glimpse of 
the city. Strange — I should have thought there was noth- 
ing here in the capital could remind me of her and of all I 
had lost when she died, of all that had been immolated with 
her, and yet, this corner or that turning that might well re- 
call to me some painted face easily accosted, spoke to me of 
her, of only her, of Bernardette and of no other woman. 

Here was the street we walked down arm-in-arm on a 
New Year’s eve — she gossiping of her boys, babies then and 
of what she would buy them for the morrow. She wore a 
hood, I remember, a charming dress it seemed then, but that 
was long ago, her costume would look ugly enough nowa- 
days no doubt — nothing alters so quickly as women’s fash- 
ions. 

Here was the Place de la Madeleine and the flower- 
market. When we lived in Paris, she came here in the 
morning early after Mass. I remember a rose-shrub she 
bought from here, I imagine. It stood in the centre of our 
table, in the Hue St. Louis en Lille, and she would bend 
aside and hold down the leaves with a caressing little ges- 
ture so as to see me when we talked together. . . . She was 
very young then . . . why it was in our early days together, 
the children were not yet born. 

In the cemetery summer seemed at the full and the graves 
were green, only here or there some new-turned turf showed 
brown while now and then we passed a pit gaping black. 
At its edge, the soil kept crumbling, ebbing down into the 
hole, the earth ran incessantly as the sands of an hour-glass, 
and as it sifted it gave out its rustic, fertile odour. Birds 
were singing, the sun shone as though to put life into the 
cut lilies and mortuary emblems, as though to cause the im- 
mortelles to bloom and bring to flower the jet and pearl 
wreaths. Women were praying, their black dresses trailing 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


329 


in the grass. They bent over the graves and seemed to com- 
mune with the dead, whispering with them in the peace of 
the sun-flooded scene. Mausoleums and vaults tapered white 
like Greek temples, and dwarfing them all, rose the Crema- 
torium. 

I waited here, in the ante-room; I waited, and I heard 
the hurtling of iron doors. 

Some one brought me my wife’s jewelry, her earrings, 
they looked so small in the palm of my hand, and her wed- 
ding-ring. I remember she would never take off her wed- 
ding-ring — she had been told it brought unhappiness to do 
so and she believed this for she was somewhat credulous, a 
little superstitious in what concerned her home and those 
she loved. 

From behind the closed door, a sound pierced through 
me, a grinding noise like that a truck makes rolling on a 
track ... I thought how now she was given over to the 
flame, how it would lap and hiss over her dear face and 
through - her long hair. I knew this was what she would 
have chosen and yet it seemed terrible to think of her deli- 
cate body, scorched, consumed to a handful of ashes. I 
pictured her with closed eyes, so white, let down into that 
red bed. 

Some one once told me — I don’t pretend to know if it is 
true — that the last thing of us to perish in the mortuary 
furnace is the heart, hut, in its turn, it, too, passes into ashes. 
And so it must he, so it was now with her, with Bernardette, 
with that heart of hers that had burnt for me with such an 
inextinguishable love. 

When I came out from that dark waiting-room, the green, 
sun-flooded cemetery, with its crude, irreverent sheen of 
grass and glare of marble, dizzied me. 

Black shapes pressed about me, all those who had fol- 
lowed her here. They spoke to me of her, voices broke off 
at her name. I saw tears in some eyes. Such sympathy 
touched, hut somewhat surprised me. How many friends 


330 


A WOMANS MAN 


she had made. What staunch friends Bernardette had had, 
how real a mark she had left in many hearts. It was strange 
all these Parisians had grown to appreciate her. How had 
this come about? They had learnt to understand and love 
her. How had this happened? When? She had always 
lived, especially of late, a secluded life. 

I was glad to travel back to Tours alone. My sons had 
stayed in Paris, overseeing the last formalities. Yes, I was 
glad to be alone. It was time I realised just what I had lost, 
just what power had gone from me with her. It was time 
I faced the future. 

I tried to do so and all the while the train swooped 
through the open country, through this country I knew by 
heart. Familiar scenery, views learnt by rote spread out 
before me and everywhere brooded the sacred hush and the 
purple incandescence of twilight. 

This old earth of ours is the frame and setting of our 
passions. Could it be then that in the past, when I used 
to travel this way, along this track towards Tours, some 
secret and unconscious joy possessed me, gave a glamour to 
the route ? What irony if that were true ! Can it be a man 
may hurry towards happiness, towards the companion of 
his heart and not know why he hurries? Can it be a man 
may have at home waiting for him, the woman he loves, 
turn to her often, irresistibly, and never recognise her ? Yes, 
this may be, I know, this awful blunder, this criminal obtuse- 
ness may last a life-time — with me it was so. 

Yet the day dawns, the hour strikes when the poor, 
fatuous wretch, the self-sufficient fool who never knew whence 
came the mercy and the tender strength that held him up 
through life, wakes to find himself alone, the mainspring of 
his life broken. So it was with me. I had followed after 
strange gods, I had relied on absinthe and on transient love 
for inspiration, while all the time she who was my mainstay 
went along with me through life at my side, unrecognised. 

She was dead now — Bernardette was dead. The fire 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


331 


that had consumed her had burnt my songs out of my heart 
— what genius I had had, was ashes now with her. 

I felt I knew I should hear no more the sacred call of 
art now, since her dear voice was stilled. She was dead and 
I should never write again. No, not unless a woman’s devo- 
tion, her chaste, illuminating tenderness, flared up for me 
anew and showed me on through life, lit the way for me 
with love’s torch. But how could that he again? . . . 
Never should I know such another woman. Women, yes a 
score of them no doubt, would yet come my way, one step- 
ping on another’s heels, one face and then the next jostling 
through my life. Intrigue after intrigue ever renewed, so 
hunger and thirst revive in a man, but the woman, the com- 
rade, the tender friend and mate, the dear she — my soul’s 
companion as I understand her, will not come my way again. 
And for the first time I regretted we had had no woman 
child born to us — my wife and I. No girl who might have 
inherited her mother’s eyes and voice and deluded me with 
her gaze and her soft inflection into writing once more. And 
for the first time I understood why Bernardette — how well 
she knew me, she read me through and through with love’s 
deep insight — had wished we might have had a daughter. 

I saw again the high garden wall, the deep porch, the 
wide portal of home. It was shabbier, this old provincial 
house, more weather-worn than I remembered and it showed 
the handiwork of all the elements. It was marked by the 
frost, by the long autumn rains and by our good sun of 
Tourraine. It was steeped in the generous summers that 
make our vintages so fine, and to-day when I laid my hand 
on the door-posts, I found them warm still from the lazy, 
sunny afternoon. 

A maid-servant, her eyes were red and swollen with weep- 
ing, opened the door for me. Over her shoulder, I saw the 
hall. Nothing was different here — no, not different exactly — 
for the furniture was all in its place, the chairs and the table 
were where I used to see them, the clock chimed and struck 


332 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


the hour, nothing was altered here, nothing was changed and 
nothing, nothing was the same. 

Here she used to meet me, stretching out her hands, 
calling me by my name. We would climb the stairs together, 
she and I, just as I was doing now, alone to-day, and her 
skirt trailing after her, filled in our silences with its sibilant 
whisper. 

No, I could not accustom myself to the fact that she no 
longer lived here. Often I would pause as though waiting, 
listening for her step. I would turn my head this way and 
then that as though watching for her. And thinking of her, 
expecting to greet her in spite of myself, I went to her room. 

Oh, regret, remorse, most persistent of our sorrows! 
Here, under this gabled roof, between these cretonned walls, 
was her room, here behind this curtain hung her dresses and 
they still kept the characteristic fragrance of her body. This 
was the window, this was the view she saw every day. It 
struck me as rather melancholy, this flat plain streaked with 
houses and beyond striped by poplars to infinitude. She 
must have looked this way sometimes with sad thoughts, and 
standing where she had so often stood, I realised how dull 
this woman’s life must have been, how dull and how lonely ! 
And at last for the first time since her death, I felt the blessed 
relief of tears — and thinking of her, suffering for her, look- 
ing about this room where she had entered young and happy 
and where she had died, I wept. 

I was not with her when she died. I came back too 
late. When I reached Tours, she was dead. She never heard 
what I had to tell her, all that my heart was full of; when 
I turned home and hurried to her, she was beyond the 
sound of my voice — that, I could never forgive the God 
she believed in — and yet I could not have endured to see her 
die. I could not have borne it, I must have looked away. 
Oh, that last look of human eyes looking towards those 
they love ! There is nothing so piteous on our vast, revolving 
earth, unless perhaps the gaze of our poor, mute brothers, 


A WOMAN’S MAN 333 

the beasts when they feel their strength is done and they 
turn on their side. 

How tenderly she said good-bye to me the other evening 
when I left her! I never can forget the yearning in her 
eyes. She was looking at me then for the last time, for all 
time, for eternity, and she knew it, trying to remember me 
for ever, for she believed we remember and we love beyond 
the grave; she relied on immortality. Can it he she was 
right ? I sometimes think, that even in the knowledge of this 
world, she was wiser than I. Perhaps she knew we do not 
die with our bodies. 

I should like to believe with her if I could. I should 
he glad to think I should see her again and have a chance 
to ask her forgiveness and tell her that I loved her, had 
always loved her, I should find life easier. But no, I do not 
feel assured of our eternal quality. I do not know of what 
stuff we are made. I do not know if we shall meet, ever 
again come together . . . yet that something of us does 
survive after we are dead, this I do believe, if only in the 
hearts of those who have loved us. 

And suddenly I found myself with clasped hands trying 
to pray, my face hidden in her white counterpane, kneeling 
where she had knelt before me, calling on the Eternal 
Silence. But I stammered, when I spoke to her God, I did 
not know how to address him and I fell to analysing, think- 
ing, dreaming, my forehead pressed against the foot of her 
bed, while in the dusk the fragrance from the open ward- 
robe, the fragrance her clothes gave out, grew in intensity 
and vital sweetness and penetrated to my heart. 

I remembered something our old servant, Yvonne, once 
told me, a legend of Brittany. It seems these simple folk 
believe that the soul which has loved much on earth, with 
perfect sacrifice and deep devotion, after death is slow to 
detach itself from our world, but hovers close to the well- 
beloved, trying to help and to watch over him, and some- 
times take some humble shape so as to keep near him. . . . 


334 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


I started, I looked up, I listened, I had beard a timid 
rap on the door, a soft, solicitous tapping — there it came 
again, fainter even than before, and now a third time light 
as the sound the houghs make against the window-pane, or 
the brushing of a bird’s wing against a wall. My heart 
beat faster and I rose and opened the door. 

At first I saw nothing, no face met mine, no eyes were 
on a level with mine. I looked down and there waiting on 
the threshold, was a little child. She stared up at me sol- 
emnly while she sucked the elastic that held her hat, poised 
way back on her head, gravely balanced. She stood very 
stiff, her arms pressed against her body and her blunt-toed, 
awkward peasant boots butted out squarely from under the 
spare folds of her poor black dress. She swallowed and 
tried to smile, she was primed with politeness and a pre- 
pared speech. 

“Come in, little girl,” I said, “what do you want, who 
are you ?” But she seemed at a loss to tell me. 

“Who is this ?” I asked the servant who had followed my 
little visitor into the room. “Who is it ?” 

“The child Madame adopted. Does Monsieur wish me 
to have her sent back to the Home, the matron is waiting 
downstairs to know. I told the matron that perhaps now 
since what has happened, Monsieur might not care. . . .” 

“No, no,” I said, “no — thank her, she need not wait, the 
little girl will stay here.” 

I took the child by the hand and led her to the window. 
I wanted to look at her well in the light and know why my 
wife had chosen her; why she had loved her best amongst 
so many other orphan children, but the little maid hung 
down her head and watched her shuffling feet. I could not 
really see her face, I was afraid of making her shy and I let 
go her frail wrist. Supposing she began to cry ! 

I thought perhaps I had best show her her room where 
there were some toys I knew my wife had chosen for her — 
a doll and other playthings which might distract her. 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


335 


She blinked a little and stared when I opened the nur- 
sery door, hut she kept grave, somewhat haughty, so the poor 
must seem when they first enter Paradise. 

The doll was still there and it looked very hard at her. 
She too looked at it out of a corner of her eye, hut she had 
heard the servant say she must he ready for supper soon, — 
and I watched her wash her face with soap and cold water, 
and I saw her climb on a chair and hang her jacket and 
hat on a peg just within reach of her little arms. As she 
stretched up, her dress yanked at the shoulders, her thin wrists 
peeped out of her sleeves and straining on tip-toe, she got 
very red in the face, hut she kept her decorum, her pre- 
cocious dignity. She was sobered by circumstance, compe- 
tent beyond her years, raised in the stern, sad school of pov- 
erty, broken in by charity. 

“What is your name ?” I asked her as we went down to 
supper hand in hand. But it seemed she had no name really 
— she was a foundling, born in May, in Mary’s month, so they 
had christened her Mary, but I gathered they had called her 
pretty much anything at the Orphanage, just something so 
as to distinguish her from the other Marys. 

“I must find you a name of your own,” I told her and I 
asked her her age. 

She assured me she was eight. 

“You’re a big girl for that,” I said, but I really did not 
know if she were big or small, short or tall for her years. 
She stood about as high as the back of a chair. 

One thing I noticed and I thought it strange. After 
supper I saw her furtively brush some crumbs with one hand 
into the palm of the other and scatter them on the window- 
sill for the sparrows. Often and often I have watched my 
wife do just this. 

I sat late in my study that night, my lamp smouldered 
and died down and the chilly dawn bleached the window to 
a milky opalescence. I was awake when the birds trill, 
try their voices, tune up to greet the sun. It was a long, 


336 


A WOMAN’S MAN 


sleepless night I had endured and yet these first dark hours 
had not dragged so heavily as I had dreaded. I found com- 
fort in the thought of this young, new life budding in my 
house to blossom here, of this little girl resting now just 
overhead, steeped in the sweet dreams of childhood, sleeping 
under my roof, under my care. 

Little Melisande, coming from no one knows whence, if 
only for the sake of her who adopted you, you will be dear 
to me always, sacred as my own daughter, for she loved you 
best amongst many others and chose you with love’s vital 
instinct. 

She chose you to be my companion and to fill my life 
when she was dead, for she knew, that despite my passionate 
hallucinations, it was on her love that I relied, leaning on it 
as on a crutch. She judged you strong enough to bear the 
weight of an artist’s humours, his intermittent anguish and 
cruelty; she relied on your childish shoulders knowing they 
must in time become a woman’s. And perhaps, indeed it 
well may he, as you grow up — when a feminine step, a femi- 
nine voice thrill once more through my house — that my heart 
may stir into life and I may write again. All the same, it was 
a big contract she bound you over to, you poor little girl. 

For my part, with all that is best in me I shall cherish 
you. Through you I shall experience a sweet relationship, 
a pure, tender intimacy, a feminine love unknown to me as 
yet. You will be my daughter. 

I shall bring you up as best I can, wisely, I hope. I hope 
to be able to give you a good dot and marry you to the man 
of your choice. But I shall ask you not to forget me as I 
grow old and crotchety, to keep in touch with me at the last 
when I am ill and failing, so I may feel assured a woman’s 
hands will close my eyes. 

I know what I shall call this child, by a name once com- 
mon with us in the provinces, a name that may seem rather 
old-fashioned by now — a name I used often to say, though I 
never said it half tenderly enough — Bernardette. 


I 




Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing Agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: 





DEC 096 

BARKEEPER 


A/'S 


PRESERVATION TECHNOLOGIES. INC. 
Ill Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Twp., PA 16066 
(412)779-2111 






























. 

































































